


A Draught of Light

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blacksand - Freeform, F/M, M/M, QUICKSAND, Worldbuilding, oh darlings you have such a complicated past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 200,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating the troubled past of the light and shadow adepts, Pitch Black, the last shadow adept, is accused of a crime he didn't commit. He flees from the law and takes refuge with Sandy, the last light adept.</p>
<p>After almost five hundred years, it is time to solve the mystery of their solitude and immortality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Visitor/Starlight

_Hussssh. Husssssh. Husssssssh._ The waves sound much as they always do on the shore of the Isle of Dreams, but as the sun sets, Sandy knows that the steady rush will soon be interrupted. Tonight, the susurration of the waves will be broken by the scrape of a hull on the golden sands. All the signs have been pointing to it since dawn. Sandy will have a visitor.

            Ordinarily, he would be patient, and wait until that visitor arrived to discover who it might be, but Sandy is restless this afternoon. The wind has changed, and he knows in his bones that today is the last day of Summer, no matter what the city calendars might say.

A few hours earlier, as he bottled the last of the best honey-thick sunshine, he found himself often staring out to sea, as if by looking he thought to summon his visitor from over the horizon. He watched the patterns the seabirds cut in the air, and observed what had grown, and what had been blighted, overnight, and traced the patterns the wind has blown in the sand, and all of it said, over and over again: _you will have a visitor who will not arrive under the light of the sun_.

            But they did not tell him who that visitor will be, and the question swam and leapt through his mind through all his waking hours, distracting him so much that he dropped the last bottle of sunshine of the day as he put it on the shelf, shattering the precious, thin, glass that only he knew how to make. And this too seemed to be a sign of the visitor.

            He allows himself to be impatient, then, snapping his fingers so the shards of glass fly away to his workshop and the bins of scrap glass on their own instead of sweeping them up and carrying them over in a dustpan. He leaves the sunshine where it spilled, seeping into the stone floor of the cellar and soaking the hem of his robe with giddy summer warmth. He has no spare bottles now, in any case, and no mind to gather it back up.

            What he chooses to do instead is to go to the large, bright room with three walls of unglazed windows on the west side of his house that allows him to observe both the setting sun and the beach. There, he gives in and begins to scry for the identity of his guest, bathed in the eerie, filtered gold of the dying day drawn ever-closer to its demise by towering black storm clouds gathering from the north and south.

            From the floor, where it is scattered in abundant drifts, Sandy takes a hand of purest golden sand, the physical representation of his magic in this world. He lets it flow up and down through his hands, over and over, all the while asking it about the signs he has seen, telling it about the broken bottle, the storm, that today was the last day of summer. Finally, he asks it, in a language perhaps only one other remains fluent in, _Who is to be my visitor who will not arrive under the light of the sun?_

            The sand rises up in a slow cyclone above his palms, glimmering in the nearly horizontal rays of the last summer sun. Sandy knows better than to force it to take shape too soon: the answers he would get from it then would be false. Once or twice he thinks it is about to take form, but immediately the grains fly apart. This continues until only a sliver of sun remains above the water. Then, suddenly, the handful of sand becomes a swarm of butterflies, swooping around him as if for joy before falling down to rejoin the drifts.

            _Ah! Him!_ Sandy thinks, a knowing smile spreading across his face. _It’s about time_.

            He will not run out to light the lighthouse beacon, then. His visitor will not need it.

 

            Finally, the sun slips below the horizon, a green flash appearing for an instant to careen between the storm clouds before the two thunderheads meet. At that moment, the wind ceases to murmur and starts to howl, whipping through the magic room and tossing the sand about, though it can force none to quit the room and rejoin the beach. Still, it would do no good to take chances, and Sandy struggles against the gusts to close the wooden shutters of the windows. He manages to secure them all, but only after desperately wringing some drops of sunshine from the hem of his robe into his mouth for strength. Either this storm is the most powerful that has ever struck the island, or he is weaker than he once was. Strangely, even after so many years, he is fairly certain it is the storm that is strong, rather than he weak. If he has not shown his age for almost five hundred years, why should he start today?

            After closing the shutters, the wind only shrieks the louder. Rain begins to rattle against the boards, followed by the heavier clatter of hail. Sandy rushes through the rest of his house, sunshine-spattered robe lighting the way, closing shutters and blocking off rooms until only the kitchen, at the center of the house, is easily accessible. In its westward-facing window, Sandy sets a hurricane lamp that he’s filled with winter solstice sunshine for fuel. It’s a faint light, and rather cold, but he thinks his visitor will appreciate it for these qualities, as well as its rarity.

            _Any minute now_ , he thinks, resting his elbows on the windowsill beside the lamp. The rain is thick enough that he can’t really see the beach, even when lightning strikes.

            The strikes become more frequent, and the thunder turns from rumbling to cracks and booms, the like of which he has not heard since—since a certain argument he had in the city. If he had not built the house himself with his own magic, he would be worried about it being shaken to pieces. Then, all at once, he feels every hair on his body stand on end, and hears a thunderclap that sounds as though the world is breaking in two, starting with his kitchen. Lightning must have struck the house! He runs to the north tower, which holds a lightning rod at the peak of its roof especially crafted to be tempting to any self-respecting storm.

            _Yes!_ Sandy claps his hands when he sees that the bottle at the end of the lightning rod is filled to the brim with blindingly bright, purplish light. Still, the lightning bolt was prodigious enough that much has splashed out. It stains the knees of his robe as he wrestles the massive bottle away from the wire of the lightning rod, and he shakes his head as he realizes he is in no fit state to receive company—even though for this visitor he made his first impression long ago. Ah, well, it cannot be helped.

            Sandy attaches the wire that ran into the bottle to a wire that runs outside the house to the ground, lamenting that he has no more bottles. Lightning will probably strike again before this is through, and he so rarely can capture it! Perhaps he could make one while he was waiting? No, that required both time and concentration, and he has neither right now.

            Slowly, carefully, Sandy makes his way down the spiral staircase with the bottle almost half his size. He reaches the kitchen without mishap and decides to leave the lightning there for now. The cellar can be braved when the weather is calmer—and, suddenly, it is calmer. _Now! He must be here now!_ In the fresh silence, he rushes to the window and the lamp, just in time to see a small black boat with a black sail making its way through the shallows of the bay, illuminated by the lightning of the storm waiting in the distance.

            Holding his breath without noticing it, Sandy watches the boat run aground. A tall, slender figure leaps from the deck with inhumanly graceful movements that he knows any other observers would probably explain away with the strobing effect of the lightning. But Sandy knows better. The man out there really does move like that—like a shadow tied to no fleshly body.

            He sees the man, standing thigh-deep in the water, grab hold of a line on the bow of his ship and begin to pull it on to the beach. Cracking the window no more than an inch, he hears the sound he expected earlier in the day: the crunch and scrape of wood on sand. With some effort, the man pulls the boat up beyond the high tide line. Sandy smiles bemusedly. It is a small boat, but not meant for this kind of treatment. Yet with no anchor, and the man not being a sailor, he supposes this must be the only solution he can think of to keep the boat safe and in one place through the storm.

            Finally, the man lets go of the rope and begins to make his way slowly up the beach towards the house. As he walks, Sandy realizes that despite the leap from the deck of the boat, the man is exhausted, and he cannot help but feel alarmed once he realizes this. Of all people, that man should not be exhausted on a clouded, stormy night, just as he himself should not be exhausted on a clear, sunny day.

            The man smiles weakly at the light in the window before moving to the plain door beside it. And then, finally, _finally_ , he knocks.

            Sandy opens the door at once. Standing there, Pitch Black is just as he remembers him. Very tall, very thin, skin pale in such a way as to be nearly gray. Black hair falling to just below his shoulders, now escaped from his customary ponytail with the rain and wind and pressed damply to his neck and forehead. Thin lips. Aquiline nose. And the eyes! Mostly gray now, of course, as they have been, but still with a ring of gold around the pupil. How long it has been since he has seen that shade of gold in anyone’s eyes save his own!

            “Well, Sandy, aren’t you going to invite me in? The storm will be back in a moment.”

            Sandy nods and ushers him in, leading him towards one of the sturdy driftwood chairs around the kitchen table.

            Pitch sighs, settling into it. He watches Sandy out of the corner of his eye as he gathers kettle and cups to prepare tea. “Why yes, I would like some, thank you for asking.”

            Sandy smiles back at him, which causes Pitch to snort. “You haven’t been talking again, haven’t you? How long has it been this time? Feel free to bring your voice back, I promise not to laugh at you this time. I’m far too tired for that.”

            He clears his throat, thinks a bit, and then says, creakily, “Three weeks. And then it was only to thank the captain and crew of the supply boat.”

            “You’re getting old, Sandy.” Pitch closes his eyes. “I remember when you were young. You used to sing every day.”

            “I had reasons, then.” He sets a cup of scullcap tisane before Pitch, and a cup of catnip tisane at his own place.

            “I thought an adept of light always had reasons to sing.” He sips his drink. “Faugh! Sandy, you know I hate scullcap.”

            “Keep drinking it, it’s good for you. Anyway, Pitch, it may have slipped your memory, but most of the songs I knew then were meant for three- and four-part harmony. There’s a bit of a problem with that now.”

            For a time, this silences Pitch. The storm returns, even fiercer than before, and Sandy moves the lamp from the windowsill to the table. He closes and latches the shutters, thinking of how he’s just made the entire island invisible. Only the lightning could show where it is now.

            When Pitch speaks again, his bantering tone is gone. “Actually, Sandy, that problem is one of several things I came to talk to you about. But—” he yawns, “I don’t know if I could string two thoughts together now. Do you still have a guest room? With—heavy curtains?”

            “Yes. Of course. But it’s just past sunset. You shouldn’t be wanting to sleep just yet.”

            “I just sailed non-stop from the City of the Moon, on my own, calling a storm the whole way. What should I be thinking of if not sleep?”

            “At least let me make you some supper first. Give you some dry clothes.”

            Pitch glances at Sandy. “I don’t fancy wandering around in a yellow robe that falls only to my knees.”

            Sandy just shakes his head and motions for Pitch to follow him upstairs.

 

            _It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in anything but black_ , Sandy thinks as they eat a simple meal of seared flounder and homemade bread.

            In the borrowed clothes, Pitch looks much younger, and even more tired. He is wearing tan drawstring pants that only reach to mid-calf and look almost like split skirts on his thin frame, and an embroidered orange tunic that on him only barely reaches his hips. It would billow around him save for the rope belt he’s tied around his waist. Due to the chill of the storm the outfit is completed by yes, a yellow quilted robe that falls only to his knees and a pair of thick socks made of undyed wool.

            “I suppose you’ve heard the rumors about a new ‘adept’ in the City of the Moon,” Pitch says, squeezing a lemon onto his fish.

            “Yes…but I have to admit I haven’t been reading the Lunar King’s letters very carefully for some time now. He keeps wanting me to return to the city, or do something for the city from here—as if I’m not already! I’ve told him hundreds of times that I have no wish to get involved in city politics. If the people are happy I couldn’t care less about the bloodlines of those in power. The king himself could be replaced with a stuffed monkey for all it matters to me.”

            Pitch smiles. “Still, it may interest you to know that the rumors say that this new adept is the king’s bastard son.”

            “So? Is he?”

            “An adept, or the king’s bastard? Well, of course he’s not an adept. He would need training to become an adept, and that would mean you had been teaching him.”

            “Or you.”

            “I was never an adept Sandy, you know that very well.”

            “Not of light, no…”

            “And you also know that according to the laws of the City of the Moon there is no other kind.”

            “And you know the laws were not always so.”

            “Indeed. And we will be speaking of that later. Back to the boy, though. He’s not an adept, though he does have great power. He should have been trained. If he had been born in Windburne…Instead, from what I understand, his powers manifested themselves all at once, erasing his memory, turning his skin pale, whitening his hair. He also caused a blizzard in the middle of July.”

            “Why do people think he’s the king’s bastard?”

            “Because the king took him in while he’s in the process of looking for some way to restore his memory. Personally, I think it’s a load of hogwash. The king just wants a powerful magic user at his side who will have been molded by him since childhood. The boy can control the weather: he’ll be a potent ally.”

            “Interesting, but what does this have to do with your visit? Do you think that because of the paling of his skin, he would be suitable for shadow training?”

            “Good God, no. I admit the thought crossed my mind, so I went to see him when he appeared as part of a royal progress through the city. I only saw him for a few minutes, but…you just know, Sandy. He’s entirely unsuitable for either shadow or light.

            “No, the reason I am here has to do with his missing memory. The first, and most obvious place for him to look, of course, was the Great Library. I had been in the city for several months when the boy started searching, heavily involved in my own research. I was making little progress, but I had expected that. But when the boy began following the trails that would lead him to his own records, he found nothing. Gaps in the files. Anything related to his name had been stolen. It set the library into an uproar, and a full investigation and inventory was launched. Well, as it turned out, it was not only Jack Frost’s files that had been stolen, but several others, along with a great many of the books and documents I had been looking for.

            “With dozens upon dozens of call slips as evidence that I had been interested in the stolen books, and as a shadow adept who had pled so vehemently for access to the library at night, suspicion naturally fell on me. Nevermind that I would be horrifically stupid to leave all that evidence and that there is no conceivable motive for me wanting to conceal the Frost boy’s memories. But the city must have a villain, and, what do you know, there I was! Their own personal boogeyman!”

            Sandy tries to keep a straight face, and fails. “Can you blame them? It’s not every day that you can serve an arrest warrant to the thing under the bed.”

            Pitch raises an eyebrow. “The only time I ever had to hide under a bed was because of you. Anyway, getting down to brass tacks, Sandy, that’s why I’m here. I’m a fugitive from the law. I figured this would be the last place they’d look for me.”

            “Well,” says Sandy, clearing away the dinner things, “that’s because they don’t know either of us very well.”

            Pitch sighs in relief. “So you believe me when I say I never stole anything from the Great Library?”

            “In the circumstances described, yes.” He smiles at him. “If you were going to steal from the Great Library, no one would have any inkling it was you…until you couldn’t resist sharing your fantastic finds with me and I turned you in, of course.”

            “Though you would wait to turn me in until you had finished reading all the forbidden texts I brought to you.”

            Sandy laughs. Oh, he _has_ missed Pitch. “Would you like something a little stronger than tea?”

            “I know what you’re offering, Sandy. Don’t you think that might do me more harm than good?”

            “If what I offer is about to do you harm, I’ll drop the cup before I can hand it to you. I’ll spill it. It will spontaneously shatter.”

            “And if, hating to waste light, I should lick the drops from your fingers?”

            Sandy freezes for a moment. “Then you should begin to turn me to shadow against my will. I will be much obliged to you if you do not jest about such things, regardless of any memories you feel the need to…pointlessly…resurrect.”

            Pitch looks away, choosing for the moment to gaze into the glow of the hurricane lamp instead. “That’s winter solstice sunlight, isn’t it? Always my favorite, ever since I was a boy…the Synod should have kicked me out when I told them that. Would have saved everyone a whole lot of trouble.”

            “Kicked you out of the Luminous Academy for loving light, Pitch? Just because it’s surrounded by more darkness than the rest doesn’t mean it’s part of the darkness. It just means it’s more beautiful and rare.

            “Now. Come down to the cellar. I have something even better to show you. Oh! And you can help me carry down that melchizedek of lightning. Thank you, by the way. Under my influence the weather here is generally calm. I don’t know when I would have gotten the lightning otherwise. Careful with it, the glass is very thin.”

            They reach the cellar without incident, and Pitch is surprised to find it dark, aside from the bottle they hold—he shielding himself from direct contact with the light using the sleeves of his robe—and a few golden splashes on the floor matching the stains on the hem of Sandy’s robe.

            “I’ve found that when light is stored for a long time, even my glass can’t prevent some seeping away,” Sandy explains. “So I keep them in sleeves of silver foil, and that helps.” He removes some of said foil from a work table and wraps it around the lightning bottle. When it’s covered, he moves it to a corner and whispers a few words in that language of which perhaps one other person retains fluency. Perhaps they might have a conversation in it later.

            He moves through the shelves of the cellar until he comes to a rack built to hold demi bottles. Turning to Pitch, who has followed him over, he says, “I think you’re going to like this. I did what they always said was impossible.”

            “You don’t mean…?”

            With a gesture, the foil unwraps itself from the small bottle and flies away to fold itself neatly on the work table. Sandy watches a smile of amazement slowly grow on Pitch’s face as he gazes at the collected starlight in Sandy’s hands. It’s softer and dimmer than any other light in the cellar, and Pitch finds that he can hold the bottle without the faint sting that comes with the touch of moon and sunlight. He brings it closer to his face and doesn’t bother to stop himself from gasping when he glimpses the thousands of colors glimmering slowly in the pearly liquid.

            Reluctant, he looks away for a moment, to ask Sandy: “How?”

            “Practice.” Pitch stares at him in disbelief. “No, I mean it. Starlight is thinner and finer than sunshine or moonlight, but the process of gathering it is the same. It just takes more concentration and patience. That bottle you’re holding is the result of an entire year of work. I think our masters told us it was impossible all those years ago because there was never enough time to really try. There were always new adepts to train, duties to attend to in the world. And they wouldn’t have wanted us sitting up all night trying to catch starlight when we could yet barely catch half a bottle of sunshine in the summer.”

            “And yet we stayed up all night anyway,” Pitch murmurs, his gaze returning to the starlight. “Did you filter the moonlight out, or gather it only on moonless nights?”

            “I gathered it only on moonless nights. When I was just starting out, I tried filtering out the moonlight, but I didn’t get the subtle colors then. Now. Would you like to try some?”

 

            There is just enough in the bottle to fill two ordinary wine glasses—ordinary, that is, in size, for of necessity they are made of the same light-holding glass that Sandy uses to make all his bottles.

            “Should we make a toast?” Pitch muses, tilting his glass back and forth. The hurricane lamp has been extinguished, and Sandy has hung his robe up on the cellar side of the door to that room, so the only illumination comes from the starlight they are about to drink.

            Outside, the wind batters madly at the shutters, throwing water and ice against them in frustration when it realizes it cannot get in. Sandy doubts Pitch has control of it any more. Right now, it’s no doubt natural weather that was waiting for the first day of autumn and something to counteract Sandy’s calming influence to finally give the Isle of Dreams a long-deserved beating.

            “Of course,” Sandy says. Pitch is glad to hear that Sandy’s voice seems fully recovered by now. It’s always sounded like the flavor of a June dawn to him, clear, pure, yet rich and well capable of promising scorching heat later on. Then again, perhaps he misremembers. Both later heat and June dawns are things he has not experienced for centuries.

            Sandy continues, “but what will we toast to on this first of Autumn?”

            “Why not Autumn itself? The season of mists. Do you remember that toast?”

            “How could I forget?” Sandy raises his glass, followed by Pitch, then begins. “To absent friends.”

            “Lost loves,” Pitch continues.

            “Old gods.” Sandy raises an eyebrow.

            “And the season of mists.” Of course Sandy wouldn’t want to toast old gods.

            “And may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.” They say this last in unison, gently touch their glasses, and drink.

            Sandy watches as Pitch tips the light into his mouth, watches his adam’s apple move as he swallows. How long has it been since he was offered such a drink? Ages and generations. Pitch’s eyes close and his mouth curls into a smile after the first sip, tongue darting out to collect any drops that might linger on his lips.

            Pitch sighs. The last time he drank light was hundreds of years ago, when he was not yet a shadow adept, but merely a shadow apprentice. He had been in the city with Sandy…he lets the memory flow past. There would be time to talk of that later. Now, he will enjoy the starlight. It flows cool and smooth down his throat, far thinner than water, tasting ever so faintly of lilac and lavender, with even fainter undertones of ozone and gunpowder. It does not warm him, as sunlight used to do, but as he drinks he feels the intoxicating well-being that light brings to all (save, usually, shadow adepts) spreading through him, easing his aches and pains and telling him ever so persuasively of what joy there was in still being in the world. Yet for all it is light, it is of the night as well, calling to mind such joys that are wonderful and terrible and hidden and may yet, under the right star, be. “It’s very good, Sandy. Very good, and very strong. Perhaps it is strongest for me because of my unique situation…” He trails off, opening his eyes again and looking at the remaining starlight.

            “I hoped it would be so.”

            A smirk pulls at Pitch’s lips. “Certainly there must be more important uses of starlight than as a means to get a shadow adept light-drunk.”

            “It’s just one glass.”

            “I’m not used to it anymore.”

            “Well, I don’t have any masters any longer telling me what I should or shouldn’t do with light and you—excuse me, I see you’re right about it being strong—and no one ever caught starlight before so there aren’t any expected uses for it.”

            “Have you put any on the dream glass yet?”

            Sandy shakes his head. “I wanted to wait until I knew what the effect was going to be. Do you think I should add some to tonight’s mixture?”

            Pitch looks thoughtful. “No more than an eighth-part, if you are still going by the old eight part measure. It won’t calm the city at all, though. It might even wake some people up. Wake them up inspired to paint, inspired to write, inspired to love, inspired to set fires and smash walls…all the things they won’t do by day.” He takes another sip of his drink, and so does Sandy.

            “What would you put in the dream glass with it?”

            “One part each of the sunlight from the last hour of each day of the hottest week of the past summer, five-eighths part of the dawn of the day of the first snowfall, an eighth-part of the oldest waning crescent light you have, and an eighth-part of the newest waxing crescent.”

            “All right. You can help me pour after we finish our drinks.”

            Sandy sees Pitch’s eyes widen in shock. “What?! Sandy, no, certainly not. I just made that mixture up off the top of my head, it’s obscenely nonstandard, and anyway I answered you as Pitch Black the shadow adept. And to help you pour? Have you lost your mind? I would…I would ruin it!”

            “Hmmm.” He tilts his glass back and forth, the remaining starlight making the ordinary objects in the kitchen cast mad and eldritch shadows. “ _I don’t believe you’ve ever lost the knack of dreambrewing_ ,” he says in the language perhaps one other remains fluent in.

            “ _I never had the knack_ ,” that one answers. “ _I studied the recipe books. The one time I filled the dream glass—I was whipped within an inch of my life for the trespass._ ”

            “ _Which had nothing to do with the quality of the dreams that bloomed from your brew_.”

            Pitch’s face goes dark as he drinks the last of his starlight. “Fine,” he says after a long moment. Then, “my accent’s terrible, isn’t it?”

            “Horribly, horribly shadow-thick.” Sandy finishes his starlight so that no light remains in the kitchen, and allows himself to smile again, soft and easy. Each time they meet, every fifty or a hundred years, he worries that Pitch will have forgotten the Shining Tongue, but once again those fears have turned out to be unfounded, even though Pitch must speak Murkish—no, that is not the kind name— _Erebusian_ , there it is, much more often now.

            A few heartbeats pass. “You know I can still see you,” Pitch points out, not unkindly.

            Sandy startles, then scowls. “See this,” he says, making a rude gesture at Pitch, who retaliates by sticking out a still-glowing tongue.

 

            The dream glass is a large, shallow basin, about eight feet across and only a little over an inch deep in its center. It is the largest of its kind, over a thousand years old, transported by Sandy from the Luminous Academy to this house on the beach when he became the last light adept and it became clear that no more pupils would soon be running through the lofty chambers walled with jeweled glass.

            The lights Sandy mixes in this dream glass will enrich the dreams of sleepers for hundreds of miles in all directions, including those of the people of the City of the Moon. It is his nightly duty, and though he does not live in the city anymore and does not see the effects of his mixtures, he knows they work. Many a time the Lunar King has sent him letters asking him to make a brew to calm political unrest, followed by more letters expressing irritation that the people seem to be dreaming of more fantastical things than ever. _Naturally_ , Sandy has thought, reading those letters. _Light is not your tool, O king. Neither are dreams. And neither is your last adept. I do not care if the people are yours. I care if they dream._

            Tonight, Pitch carefully pours the seven bottles of summer sunshine into the basin, leaving the foil wrapped around them so he can touch them safely. Sandy takes the more delicate work of measuring out fractions of parts to himself, knowing that Pitch would be more likely to spill the lights and be hurt. With a hand steadied by magic and almost five hundred years of practice, he fills glass dippers of various sizes up to their very brims with the lights Pitch suggested and smoothly pours them into the dream glass. At last, he hands another small bottle of starlight to Pitch, who takes one of the smaller dippers from its hook on the side of the iron frame supporting the glass, fills it, extends his arm out over the basin till he is holding the dipper as near to the center as he is able to, and pours it out.

            With a gesture, Sandy sets the light to stir before going over to the shutters. “I hope the glass will hold in the storm,” he says above the wind that howls ever-louder up here, in the highest room of the west tower. “That starlight has given me no mind for a major warding and the view must be clear all around.”

            “Let me,” says Pitch in his ear. With a few words in Erebusian that set Sandy’s teeth on edge and make the shadows in the room quiver, the wind is suddenly quieter.

            “The storm?” Sandy asks in astonishment, hands still on the handles of the first set of shutters.

            Pitch shakes his head. “A shadow skill. Hiding things. The storm is still just as fierce out there, but it will not be able to find any weaknesses in this room.”

            “Well then,” Sandy says. “Help me take the shutters down.” In a few minutes, the shutters are stacked on the floor in a neat pile under the dream glass, and they have a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the tempest. Pitch grins at it with a wildness in his eyes that Sandy thinks would be there even without the starlight of earlier.

            With another gesture, Sandy tells the now well-mixed light to stop moving. Now, only one task remains to complete his duties. With a few turns of a brass crank set in the floor, a highly polished mirrored cone descends from the ceiling, encouraging the light to fly out the windows. As he locks the reflector in place, he hears Pitch make a faint, pained noise in his throat.

            The light! It’s shining out in all directions now. “Are you all right?” he says, turning to Pitch, who has pulled the borrowed robe up to cover his head and is looking rather ridiculous.

            “I’ll be fine. I just…need some warning now.”

            “Sorry. I didn’t think.”

            “It’s all right. No one else’s had this problem for centuries, after all.” After muttering something that Sandy can’t determine is Shining Tongue or Erebusian, he slowly lowers the robe.

            “Here—there’s just about a swallow of starlight left in the bottle for each of us.” Sandy takes his and hands the bottle to Pitch, who looks at him wryly.

            “What are you playing at, Sandy?” he asks, before carefully placing his lips to where Sandy’s were just moments before.

            “I’m not playing at anything, Pitch. But you need light. It’s written plain on your face in the golden rings around your pupils.”

            “I need more than light,” he says, watching Sandy as he walks around the dream glass until he finds a hook that holds a small glass spoon.

            Sandy raises an eyebrow and doesn’t answer, instead saying, “Do you think that you could taste your light-brew? I normally do when I create a new mixture.”

            “Yes.” He sounds unsure. “But just the smallest drop.”

            “I’ll serve it to you,” Sandy offers. “You can be sure it’s safe for you then.” Pitch walks over until he is standing next to Sandy, who dips the spoon into the light, gathering only a tiny amount in the bowl. The spoon remains steady as he reaches towards Pitch’s open mouth with it, and Pitch’s lips close around the glass without incident.

            “Oh!” he says, coughing and handing the spoon back to Sandy. “It burns! No—no—it’s good, Sandy, but—I haven’t felt anything like this since before—” he breaks off, chuckling softly. “Maybe you should try some.”

            Sandy returns the spoon to the light and does so, not unaware that this is the second time in as many minutes that they have passed an object from one’s lips to the other’s.

            The full spoonful of the dreambrew causes his skin to flush with sudden heat. The tastes of honey and cinnamon and the tempting but nearly lethal peppers that grow high on the slopes of the southern mountains rest heavy on his tongue, yet there is a taunt of ice in the flavor as well. It all mingles together into an almost overwhelming idea of the oppressive heat of the day and the promise held by night for coolness—coolness wherein one could create one’s _own_ heat. Dawn would chill that heat, but until then? The possibilities were endless.

            “Pitch,” Sandy sighs. “No one is going to sleep through this.”

            “But you do like it?”

            “Yes. I do. But I also think I shouldn’t have taken a full spoonful. Simply amazing. I should have known to be careful when I saw what those few drops did to you.”

            “What did they do to me?”

            “Just put color back in your cheeks.”

            Pitch smiles and steps a little closer. “Maybe it’s not the light that’s done that.”

            _By the sun, this stuff is strong_ , Sandy thinks, looking up at Pitch. “Remember that you’re still a shadow adept,” he says, forcing himself to step back. Just to be even more careful, he walks to the other side of the dream glass, on a pretense of gathering up the empty bottles.

            “Perhaps the light has made me forget,” Pitch says.

            Sandy closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. No matter what Pitch is saying now, it doesn’t change reality. They cannot touch, not as they have become. As an adept of light, Sandy’s touch would harm Pitch, and so the magic that flows through his being would compel his hands to skate away from his gray skin if he were mad or light-drunk enough to try such a thing.

            “You said,” he begins slowly, “that you had been making progress in your research. Perhaps what we should do now is retire to the sitting room and discuss that? The night is still young.”

            “I am well aware of the age of the night, Sandy. But if I am going to be spending any more time awake this evening, I’m certainly not going to spend it talking.”

            _Pitch was able to drink the light, maybe it would be worth testing just some simple touch—like a kiss, surely that couldn’t hurt anyone, do us both good—_ but Sandy knows that if he does that he risks Pitch holding him tightly, wanting much more. And— _oh but that would be nice—_ if it turns out he’s wrong, and Sandy’s touch still harms Pitch, and Pitch’s shadow magic is strong enough to overpower Sandy’s light and allow him to keep the contact, and if Pitch is desirous enough not to care about the harm—then Sandy will be tainted by shadows, and never be a full light adept ever again. As the last of the light adepts, he cannot risk it.

            “In that case, Pitch,” he says, “I trust you can find your way to the guest room.”

            Pitch must pass close to him to leave the tower chamber. “Believe me,” he says. “I am all too well acquainted with the way to your _guest_ room.” In the doorway, he turns back. “Are you sure? You solved the problem of starlight, after all…”

            “Goodnight, Pitch,” Sandy says firmly.

            Pitch only sighs as he makes his way down the stairs. When he is at last out of sight, Sandy sinks down to the floor, head in his hands. “Goodnight Pitch,” he whispers again, and, switching to the Shining Tongue with a small smile, “ _sweet dreams_.”


	2. Glassblowing/Signs of a Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy prepares for a journey and thinks about when he and Pitch were apprentices at the Luminous Academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive! Sorry for the hiatus. I was mucking about in the kinkmeme and well, writing my master's report.

Sandy wakes at dawn to find the first morning of autumn beginning clear and bright after the storm. He knows that in all likelihood Pitch will sleep till sundown, and so to keep himself from going mad with impatience, he embarks on the many tasks he would normally let fall by the wayside while hosting a guest.

            After quickly dressing, he takes one of the empty bottles from the night before and steps out on to the eastern side of the house and the leaf-dotted circle of sand there at the center of a meadow that presses into the forest that covers most of the island’s center. With a few words, the leaves thrown into the sand by the storm are tossed out into the tall grass. Sandy kneels in the center of the circle, bottle set into the sand in front of him.

            When he did this with a group of light adepts, a song was always sung, but there is only his mind to bring into harmony now. He takes one long, slow breath and lifts his right hand. As he exhales, he gently moves his loosely open hand through the air in small circles, as if he is winding a silk scarf around it. Soon, though, the early light begins to gather around his fingers until a more apt metaphor would see his hand as the blowpipe and the light as molten glass.

            In fact, such a metaphor would be not merely apt, but perfect. Legend has it that the first light adepts were glassblowers who saw the glow of molten glass and the dreamlike shapes they could make with it, and dared to take the next step by gathering and shaping light that had not been born as sand. Sandy doesn’t know if he believes that legend, but it offers at least some explanation for light adepts’ affinity with sand as part of their magic rather than merely as a tool used to capture light itself, the true heart of their power.

            When enough light clings to his hand, he brings it down to the neck of the bottle, into which he places his forefinger. The enchantment inherent in the glass is reawakened, and the sunshine flows from his hand into the vessel. He lifts his hand away, and watches the level of light in the bottle until he is certain that the light is still being drawn in without his direct intervention. That done, he heads over to the hot shop, the small building slightly separated from the main house on its north side.

            He takes down all the shutters, and, with less care since he knows this light is only to be fuel, gathers more of the dawn to begin to bring the temperature of the furnace up. He then adds a few scoops of the island’s pure sand and the pieces of yesterday’s broken bottle to the crucible. It will melt and fine out as he bathes and breakfasts.

 

            The gather of molten glass is cooperative today, and as Sandy goes through the by now almost automatic process of creating a standard-sized bottle like the one he broke the day before, he allows his mind to wander. He’s not surprised when the path it takes leads to Pitch, as he is now, and as he was. _Even then_ , Sandy thinks, _I couldn’t have expected to see him this early in the morning if left to his own devices_.

            Taking blocks from a bucket of water near the bench, Sandy shapes the sides of the bottle, and lets his mind call up the day he learned that.

 

            Even then, as a boy of eighteen, he had opened his eyes at dawn on that mid-June morning, though he had no real inclination to leave his bed. The small dormitory room had become a heaven last night when Kozzy—sweet, infatuated, hero-worshipping Kozzy—had accompanied him back to it after a sunset swim with several other apprentices. He wondered if any of them had noticed Kozzy hanging back from the group as they left. Probably not, he thought. On these days of late twilights and early dawns, it was always a wonder that any apprentice was able to attend to anything. Anyway, if they had noticed Kozzy lingering in the water, they would probably have just assumed he was being slightly strange, as usual. And in that case it would have only been expected for Sandy to have remained with him—after all, he was Kozzy’s mentor.

            This, however—Kozzy’s long gangly limbs twined around Sandy, his head pillowed on his chest, in an extremely disheveled bed—was a highly unexpected and unacceptable result of such a relationship. Sandy didn’t care about that. How would anyone find out? Today was a free day for all the apprentices, meant to allow them to help prepare for the Solstice Welcome—the Solstice Welcome!

            “Shit and shade,” Sandy muttered, awkwardly raising himself on his elbows so that he could see the sundial that filled the courtyard between the dormitories. Yes, it was a free day for the apprentices, but only after the early morning room inspection, which, according to the shadow cast by the gleaming gold gnomon, was about to begin in a few short minutes. The masters were probably already in the ground floor common rooms. There was no way Kozzy was going to be able to get from the ninth-year hallways to the seventh-year hallways unnoticed.

            _If we can both get dressed before they get here, maybe they’ll believe that Kozzy showed up really early for tutoring_ , Sandy thought. _As long as they don’t ask me in the Shining Tongue, we could totally get away with this._

            He shook Kozzy’s shoulders. “Hey,” he said quietly, “it’s room inspection day! And you are distinctly non-regulation.”

            “Mmhm.” Kozzy merely snuggled closer, still sound asleep.

            Sandy laughed a little. Oh, why oh why did they have to have such bad timing when deciding to do this? He would love to spend the morning wrapped in Kozzy’s arms, watching him sleep and combing his fingers through his silky brown hair, but this was the one day out of the whole year when to do such a thing was unquestionably impossible.

            “Seriously, Koz, we are going to get in so much trouble.” Kozzy stayed asleep. “Hey!” Sandy raised his voice slightly. “I don’t mean like, we’re going to have to haul sand with the first years sort of trouble, I mean like enforced separation trouble. Maybe even Mercy of the Light trouble.”

            Kozzy only shifted slightly, sighing contentedly. “False dawn, Kozzy, did I tire you out that much?” Sandy grinned, pleased to imagine for the moment that this is true. He tries to lift Kozzy off him, but he only clings tighter with his stupid-beautiful arms and legs that he hasn’t yet grown into.

            It was as he was in the midst of trying to extricate himself from Kozzy that Sandy heard voices outside in the hallway.

            “Adreela?” The voice sounded like Master Solana, and Adreela’s room was the one right next to his. _Worse to worse!_ Master Solana was in charge of the mentoring system, and personally assigned all mentor-mentee pairs. If _she_ found Sandy and Kozzy like this, Sandy can’t even imagine what she’ll do.

            It was time for desperate measures. “ _Kosmotis of the Luminous Academy_ ,” he said in the Shining Tongue, “ _you are going to wake up. Right now_.”

            Kozzy opened his large brown eyes, startled. “Sandy, it’s so early,” he said, yawning. “What are you doing calling power like that anyway? Just to wake me up?” His expression grew mischievous. “Or couldn’t you wait for more of this?” He tilted his head upward to reach Sandy’s mouth with a slow, warm kiss— _and that’s just wonderful_ , Sandy thought, _if only it wasn’t going to lead to even more of a disaster_.

            Sandy pulled away, knowing that he was going to sound a little breathless already in his hurried explanation. “Kozzy. Master Solana is inspecting the rooms in this hallway, and she’s in the room next door right now. What we need to do is get dressed, and I’ll say—”

            It was too late. Three sharp knocks sounded on the door, followed by “Sandren?”

            Sandy and Kozzy looked at each other for a split second, identical expressions of panic on their faces. “She’s going to murder us,” Kozzy said.

            “No, no,” Sandy whispered, “she’s an adept. She’ll have to get someone else to do it for her. Now quick!” He shoved Kozzy off the bed. “Hide under there. I’ll deal with this.”

            “Yes, Master Solana?” Sandy called through the door, quickly throwing on his robe from yesterday and arranging the bedclothes so that they covered the space beneath.

            “Sandren, it is room inspection day, as I am sure you are aware. Open this door at once, or I shall be forced to give you another demerit in addition to those you are trying to avoid by delaying inspection.”

            Sandy opened the door, smiling up innocently (he hoped) at the towering golden figure of Master Solana.

            She sighed. “Sandren, how can you be smiling at me in the midst of all this?” She gestured to the considerable disarray of the room, and indeed Sandy’s smile did leave his face as he noticed Kozzy’s seventh-year robe tossed among the sheets, glaringly obvious to him but hopefully not Solana, who would of course not be looking for it.

            “Your pardon, Master Solana. So close to the solstice, I often find myself smiling for no reason.”

            Solana shook her head. “Well, it’s quite clear that you’ve earned the full five demerits for an unacceptable room. What could have gotten into you?” _Don’t repeat that question in Shining, please, please don’t_ , Sandy thought. “You’ve never been unprepared for an inspection before.”

            Just then, Master Phosphrae, a very young master who had been initiated and gained her post in the same year and was still rather intimidated by Master Solana, quickly walked into Sandy’s room and ventured to stand on her tiptoes and whisper something in Solana’s ear.

            “Is that so?” Master Solana said, and Master Phosphrae nodded nervously. Solana dismissed her and turned back to Sandy. “It appears that your oddly neglectful behavior is not an isolated incident. Master Phosphrae has just informed me that your mentee did not answer his door for inspection this morning, and when the door was opened for fear that something had happened, he was not in his room at all. _Do you know anything about this?_ ”

            Sandy winced inwardly. When a master asked a question in the Shining Tongue, an apprentice had to answer in that same language, which eliminated the option of telling one of half a dozen plausible, but untrue stories.

            “ _Master Solana_ ,” he stalled, trying to think quickly. “ _Kozmotis and I were out swimming with some other apprentices last night. Afterward, it being a waxing moon and all, we stayed behind and he asked me for some extra tutoring. Naturally, I obliged, and I believe he went to sleep immediately afterwards._ ”

            “Indeed. Then I shall leave it to you to determine why he was not in his room this morning. I trust you will report any serious misconduct. In the meantime, I will also leave you with ten demerit tokens. Five for you and your unacceptable room, and five for Kosmotis and his unexplained absence, which you will give to him when you see him next. And do remember to actually clean your room. The visiting adepts will need every one.”

            Sandy nodded and took the small wooden chips burned with the letter D from Master Solana obediently. After she left and Sandy had shut the door, Kozzy crawled out from under the bed, staring at Sandy in amazement. “How on earth did you manage to tell her that story in Shining?”

            “Hmmm. Because it _was_ true, you know. From a certain point of view.”

            “Good thing she didn’t ask you what subject you were teaching.”

            “ _The influences and results of the conjunctions of heavenly bodies, of course._ Though I do flatter myself that way.”

            “No flattery,” said Kozzy, smiling at him. “You just said it in Shining so it must be true.”

            Sandy blushed and looked down. “On account of being lovesick with no clear reason to be so, I shall have to give you five demerits.”

            Kozzy raised his hands in mock horror. “Please sir, not five demerits! What if I proved to you that there was a good reason for me to be lovesick?” He stepped closer to Sandy. “I could make the case,” he kissed him lightly, “that I am hopelessly and justifiably in love with,” and again, “the most powerful,” and again, “most talented,” and again, “and most beautiful apprentice in all the Luminous Academy?” With this kiss after this declaration Kozzy slipped his tongue into Sandy’s mouth and embraced him.

            After a little while, Kozzy pulled back just to smile at Sandy, who couldn’t help but smile back. “Your argument is convincing, Kozzy, but I shall still have to give you five demerits for not being in your room this morning. _Also, you must give me a good reason for why you were gone and what you were doing._ ”

            “ _My Shining’s not that good, Sandy. I think I had better show you_.”

 

            Sandy smiles as he takes the new bottle to the annealer so it can cool without breaking. It had definitely been worth the five hours he and Kozzy had had to spend setting up tents later that afternoon. If he had known what was going to happen later…Sandy shakes his head. What had happened could not be undone, and everyone involved was long dead. Only Light or Shadow itself could be solicited for mercy upon Sandy and Pitch-who-had-been-Kozzy, and it was unlikely that either should care about them. If either did, surely it would have let them die by now.

            _No_ , Sandy thinks, walking down the beach to Pitch’s ship, his feet leaving sharp-edged footprints in the damp sand, _that we are still alive is proof that the powers will not relinquish their hold on this world lightly._ What he still wants to know, though, is what is preventing Light or Shadow from entering anyone else? Why have no children been found to become apprentices in nearly five hundred years? The other adepts of the world are thriving.

            He tells the sand to make a cradle to hold the ship upright, and then to form stairs so he can reach the deck.

            As he expected, the cabin contains Pitch’s few personal effects, stored neatly in a small trunk and a many-compartmented work box, which, without opening, Sandy can tell is filled with shadow. It makes him feel uneasy as he brings it out of the cabin, for even though he knows Pitch is a careful collector, it is all too possible that the storm knocked some of the seals loose. Still, he has carried it at least this far without incident. Sandy returns to the cabin once more to see if he has missed anything, and spots hanging on a hook by the bunk a broad-brimmed black hat. _Perhaps Pitch is venturing out in daylight more often_.

           

            Sandy leaves Pitch’s things outside the door to the guestroom where he will be sure to find them.

 

            For several hours, then, the day is strangely like any other. He fills the empty bottles from yesterday with sunlight throughout the afternoon and puts them up in the cellar. In the time he has waiting for them to fill, he watches the beach, the sea, the clouds, the dunegrass, and every other thing he can see for signs of what is to come. Like most days, the signs are unclear. He writes down the dreambrew mixture from last night in a large leather-bound notebook which he then returns to its space on the end of a shelf in his office filled with many other large leather bound notebooks. He checks the house for any damage done by the storm and replaces a few shingles, infinitely grateful that he can do this by magic.

            He looks for any signs once more, and this time there is something about the mazy flight of a bee through his garden in conjunction with a seabird’s cry that seems to tell him he will be going on a journey soon. It is enough.

            He returns to the hot shop and begins to gather glass on the end of his thinnest blowpipe. If he has read the signs right, he will need many smaller, sturdier bottles to bring his lights with him than the ones in which they are currently stored, and he has long since melted down those he used during his last journey.

            It is still several hours before sunset when, as he marvers yet another gather on the large block of marble in the center of the shop, he spots Pitch standing in the doorway, dressed in black once more. In addition to his knee-length coat and finely tailored shirt, trousers, gloves, and boots, Pitch is also wearing the broad-brimmed hat and a pair of spectacles of dark glass.

            “Do you want me to help you with that? And don’t say you’re used to working alone. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s far easier with an assistant.”

            Sandy hesitates before answering. “I don’t know Pitch, all this glass needs to be enchanted for light…”

            “Ah. Yes. Of course.”

            “…so it has to be my breath inflating the glass, but I think it would be all right if you helped shape it.”

            “What kind is it meant to be?” Pitch asks as Sandy blows gently through the pipe while spinning it to ensure symmetry.

            “No set size. Something small. Thick glass. Suitable for travel. Use that paddle to flatten the base. Might as well make something that won’t tip over.”

            Pitch does so, his face twisting into a rueful smile. “And here I thought I was going to surprise you later by asking you to come back with me to the City of the Moon.”

            “You surprised me by waking before sunset. And I didn’t know where I would be journeying or who I would be journeying with, at least according to the signs so far today.” Sandy picks up the punty from the side of the bench, getting ready to transfer the piece to it from the blowpipe.

            “You would have found out from the signs before sundown.”

            “I can’t help it, Pitch. After all, light reveals.”

            Pitch nods, carefully breaking the neck of the bottle from the glass remaining on the blowpipe. “And that’s why I need you in the City of the Moon. I’d like to explain what I’ve found as soon as this is in the annealer.”

            “All right, just let me make sure this lip isn’t going to cut anyone…”

 

            In the sitting room Pitch perches on the edge of the sofa, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. His hat and glasses rest before him on the coffee table. “Over the years, as I’ve told you, I’ve travelled around the world, learning as much as I could of the lore of all the different kinds of adepts in an attempt to figure out why we are alone, and why we are immortal.”

            “And you found a lot of legends, but no hard facts. I still wrote them down, though.” Sandy gestures with a small, thick notebook bound in buttery leather stamped with a stylized sun on its cover.

            “May I?” Sandy gives the notebook into Pitch’s waiting hand. “Yes, it’s all here,” he says, leaning back and flipping through it. “The earth-adepts and gardening and the soul-vines; the air adepts and weaving and their chimney rocks; water adepts and medicine—yes, with a question mark, they would never teach me enough of their language to understand their legends in the original, and they wouldn’t translate them—and the lifeblood rivers; the fire adepts and smithing and the heartflame pit. And finally, light adepts and glassblowing and shadow adepts and writing.”

            “No sources for us.”

            “Yes, and I remember at school the masters thought that made us very much superior to the other types of adepts. A pity I can’t recall their exact words anymore. Did they ever say in Shining that light had no source? In so many words.”

            “I certainly don’t remember. Anyway, Pitch, you know how Shining works. Unless the speaker is giving a very specific type of command, light only guides the speaker’s mouth, not the listener’s mind. It’s possible to say things that are true while knowing the listener will probably put them together and reach a conclusion that isn’t true.”

            Pitch chuckles. “Yes, you were very good at that, and I suspect you still are.”

            “ _Pitch, what reason would I ever have to lie?_ ” Sandy says, winking at him.

            “Because when the king’s personal dreambringer takes the night off, he’s going to want to know why.”

            Sandy smiles. “It’s easy to tell the truth as long as people don’t ask for details. Which, returning to our real subject, sounds like it might be the case with the history of the light adepts. What did you find in the city?”

            “Not much. Enough.” Pitch rubs his hand over his face. “Enough to be sure that someone’s keeping secrets. I would wager a great deal on those secrets having to do with the moonpools, though.”

            Sandy looks thoughtful. “You need me, don’t you? To complete your search. Shadows keep secrets. You can know that there are secrets for age upon age, but you can’t use your skills to reveal them.”

            Pitch nods. “That is one reason that I sought you out, among the others you already know. But Sandy, I would think that this would interest you as well. Don’t you want to finally know _why_ we’re like this? If we knew, we might even be able to find new adepts! Imagine it, Sandy! You’d be part of a community again! It was so incredibly important at the Luminous Academy, among the light adepts…”

            “And you?”

            “I’d have shadow apprentices, yes. We’d stay out of your way. We don’t have to start the conflict again.”

            Sandy looks up from the notebook. “I wouldn’t start it on my side.”

            “Well, apprentices can be unruly. Anyway, Sandy, this is my invitation. Come back with me to the City of the Moon, where we will work together to discover why we are immortal and why there are no new adepts. I’m certain the information is there this time.”

            “I’ve already made the travelling bottles, so you know I’ll say yes.” Sandy flips through the notebook’s pages, more for the sound and texture than any information he might glean through such a quick glance. “I do want to know why we are the way we are. I suppose I thought…I thought that the City of the Moon had nothing new to offer. Anyway, I haven’t been there in over a decade. Even if we don’t find anything, I ought to see the city now and then.”

            Pitch drums his fingers on his knee. “Speaking of that, there have been big changes recently. In fact, I’m glad to hear you haven’t been to the city in so long, since if you had—let’s just say a lot of things have been happening that I don’t think you’ll like.”

            “Like what?”

            “Oh, mostly things related to asinine bloodline concerns—you’ll see when we sail up the Serene.”

            Sandy sighs. “Now you’ve got me worried. Ah, I’ll see soon enough. With what you’ve seen though—do you think I should send a letter to the king telling him I’ll be coming for a visit?”

            “Yes. It’s not as though he can really hide anything from a light adept, and he’ll only be angry if you surprise him. And I think we might find out a lot more information in a lot less time if you don’t put him on his guard.”

            “I’ll do that today, then. We could leave tomorrow, if you feel well enough.”

            “I had a full night’s rest and a hefty dose of starlight. If I wasn’t feeling well you’d be quite justified in thinking I was on death’s door.”

            “Good. Now, as to the fact that you are a fugitive…”

            “I can hide myself if I don’t have to try to act like an ordinary person, and if I have time to prepare.”

            “That’s that, then. Guess I’d better start packing. And making your boat look more ordinary. Still, it is a pity…”

            “What is?”

            “That no one will be getting light-touched dreams until I return to the island. By the way,” Sandy says as he looks at Pitch out of the corners of his eyes, “what did you dream about last night?”

            Pitch blinks, startled. _I dreamt of lying naked on the dream glass. You poured bottle after bottle of summer sunlight onto my bare skin and it felt so good, so warm, like waking up well after being ill. You poured solstice light into my open mouth until I was about to drown in it. And when I lifted up my hands to try and tell you to stop they were as rosy-gold as your own, and so I didn’t want you to stop anymore. You ran out of solstice light and placed your mouth on my own and neither Light nor Shadow stopped you_. A small smile curves his lips upward. “Sandy, allow a shadow adept to keep his secrets.”

            _I suppose my command must have worked, then_ , Sandy thinks. “Some other time, then, he says. “So. Tomorrow.”

            “Tomorrow. I’ll be ready at any time you choose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried so hard to have the craft of the water adepts not be medicine. But my brain refused to offer anything else. Please don't get "bent" out of shape about it.
> 
> P.S. I've submitted the first chapter, with some editing, as a writing sample to the person who will decide if I'm allowed to join a graduate-level fiction workshop. EXCITING! (I'm terrified.)


	3. The Serene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy and Pitch journey from the Isle of Dreams to the Lunar Kingdom. Pitch remembers being chosen as a light apprentice, and more is revealed about the troubles of the Lunar Kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Luciana is the name of the ocean when it is bright and calm, while the Adriana is what the ocean is called when it is stormy or dark. Sailors call them sisters, though they are really the same sea at different times.
> 
> Citizens of the Lunar Kingdom are called Seleneans.

Sandy sighs as he patiently waits for the sand he’s brought with him to show the current whereabouts of the ship. Like Pitch, he’s no sailor, but unlike Pitch, he can at least make the vessel sail in a straight line.

            For the past week, they’ve been heading towards the mouth of the Serene. If Sandy’s sense of location is correct, they should be reaching it before sundown today. The sand over Sandy’s hands solidifies briefly into a map with the ship marked on it, and he nods in satisfaction. If he concentrates, it will take about six or seven hours to reach that stage of their journey—and they’ll finally be able to talk again.

            In their travels over the Luciana—or as Pitch knows her, the Adriana—they have used their powers to propel the ship far faster than they would have been able to through ordinary methods. This means, however, that Sandy is awake and pushing the ship along with the sun-dazzle on the water during every minute of daylight, and Pitch is awake and using the darkness of the depths to move the ship during every moment of the night. Sustaining such power is tiring, and each sleeps from the instant the other relieves him to when the other returns to wake him. They haven’t even allowed themselves the times of dawn and dusk to rest. Such a schedule was not absolutely necessary, but Sandy thought it would make it easier on them both to interact as little as possible when confined to such a small space isolated from the rest of the world.

 

            The days are still longer than the nights, though, and unbeknownst to Sandy, Pitch hasn’t been sleeping straight through the day. After the first two days, he found himself waking near noon. He used the time to write journal entries, and, when that task is quickly completed due to the thankfully uneventful trip, he simply sat and thought. Remembered. He’s lived for over five hundred years and gained so much knowledge, travelled to so many places, met so many people, and seen so many beginnings and endings, yet for the success of the quest he and Sandy are on now, he’s going to have to recall his first thirty years in as much detail as he can.

            He’s been having trouble doing so. There’s much he wants to skip, sometimes because lingering would only recall the difficulties of the present, sometimes because the memories are painful in themselves. Finally, today, he decides he will try to simply go back to his beginning. Before both the bitter and the sweet.

            He sits cross-legged on the gently rocking floor of the small cabin, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes, though there is no light to be seen even if they were open.

           

            Kozmotis Pitchiner is a small, skinny, boy of ten who is unlikely to ever grow into his name, though, so young, he does not realize this. In this memory, he is not preoccupied with thoughts of he and his many brothers and sisters gathered around a rude table, his mother ladling out watery soup and anxiously watching the door for their father, who would have been a farmer if the land had allowed, but instead often finds himself hiring out to do odd jobs. Odd jobs, that, Kozzy realizes only later, included that of hired muscle, though Pitchiner was never a solider. And the people that hired fighters that were never in the Lunar King’s army were less likely to send those they hired back home in one piece than most. But in this memory, Pitchiner still has both eyes, and the skin of his cheek is unscarred. His knee has not been broken yet, and he can flex all his fingers freely. Kozzy, whose only idea of things being better at this time is having more food, idolizes the man.

            In this memory, Pitchiner has taken his family into the city for the festival of the Spring Equinox. Kozzy is dazzled by the brightly colored tents of the merchants, the beating of drums and the thrumming of stringed instruments he doesn’t know the names of from the temporary stages of balladeers and dancers, the sweet and savory aromas of the dozens upon dozens of different foods being offered for sale, the glitter and masks that many festival-goers have decked themselves in, and a thousand other things. Every year, they’ve gone to the city for the Spring Festival, yet Kozzy would struggle to remember anything that stayed the same from one equinox to the next on the streets of the city, which are, to him, fairyland.

            There is one thing that stays the same though: Away from the bustle of buying and selling and laughing and shouting and pickpocketing and flirting, in the center of the city, is the Great Moon Fountain. Made from enchanted glass, the fountain is a towering array of all the plants and animals native to the Lunar Kingdom, each shooting water from the center of their flowers or from their mouths. The water somehow seems even clearer than the glass, and Kozzy thought when he was younger that it might glow in the dark.

            Every year, Pitchiner makes a point of taking his family to drink from the Great Moon Fountain. They approach slowly, for this is not only the Pitchiners’ tradition. It is the custom in the city to drink from it whenever one passes, and for all visitors to drink from it during their stays. Some say the water brings health, or luck, or prophetic dreams. Kozzy doesn’t think he’s ever experienced those things, but after last year’s festival he did dream about those who maintain the fountain.

            In the dense confusion of the crowd, he can catch only glimpses of them from his current position, but he knows they’re there and can’t wait to watch them as he and his family drink the water. To him, they are like creatures out of legend: The Light Adepts.

            They appear like foxfire from between the now so-ordinary bodies of the festival goers. Dressed in white and gold they move through the crowd, smiling and helping to pass overflowing dippers from the fountain from one person to the next. Tall or short, thin or stout, male or female—to a one, they are beautiful in Kozzy’s eyes. The light-magic they use seems to shine from their sun-touched golden skin, radiate from their honey-colored eyes, and flash in every sunbeam that reflects off the waves and waterfalls of their hair, which in richness surpasses any show made by a king’s treasury (or so Kozzy imagines).

            Finally, Kozzy reaches the fountain with his family, and oh, wonder of wonders, before he has time to cup his hands under one of the waterspouts, a glass dipper appears before him, held by a hand belonging to a smooth strong arm belonging to a sturdy young light adept who sends a kind smile down to his awe-struck face. “Let me help you with that, young man,” she says, bending down before him. She glances up at Pitchiner. “How old is he?”

            “Ten,” his father answers.

            “Just as I thought,” she says, and guides the dipper towards Kozzy’s face, some of the clear water within spilling out and onto her hand. In his mind, Pitch Black can see every glassy droplet that ran down her arm to her elbow, every glittering bead that caught in the fine hairs on her skin. Kozzy reaches out with his own hand to steady the bowl and bring it to his mouth—the glass is slick and weightless thanks to the adept’s support. As he drinks the water tastes cool and sweet as always, and he decides he will drink the whole dipper, not just a hurried sip as in other years. Through the glass he can see the distorted smile of the adept, out of the corner of his eye he sees her raising her arm—why? And then as Kozzy swallows the last mouthful she places all five fingers of her hand lightly on his forehead and says something in a language he doesn’t know.

            His vision is filled with a great flash of golden light and when he regains his sight he sees first the adept smiling and then, on his arms, flickering sparks and traces of light running along the lines of his veins. “Congratulations,” she whispers.

            The adept stands and speaks to his father. “Your son has been claimed by the light. He will become an adept himself, through training at the Luminous Academy.”

            And Kozzy looks at his father, the light running through him then allowing Pitch Black to recall every nuance of the man’s expression. “Light be praised!” Pitchiner had said, raising his hands to the sky. The boy Kozzy only sees joy, and through he does not know what the future holds, he is glad. Pitch Black sees the man trying to hide his relief, his hope. His relief that there would be one less mouth to feed in his household, his relief that he will not have to pay for Kozzy’s apprenticeship, his hope that as a light adept Kozzy would be able to help the family out of their financial troubles.

            _But that didn’t work out, did it?_ Pitch thinks, reopening his eyes in the dark cabin. _Not for any of us_.

            But it had seemed to, for a while. Pitch closes his eyes again. He must remember this. He must remember everything.

            Now, though, he finds he cannot focus his mind. He remembers things in fragments vivid to the heart and hazy to the eye, his mind wanting to race through all the ordinary moments and pause only on those few which simultaneously began his upward flight and his downward plummet.

            He remembers the wind blowing through the new growth in the fields as his father walked him to the home of the light adept who lived in the village next to theirs. He remembers how she smiled kindly at him, how bottles of light glowed from shelves high on the walls of her simple, well-built home. He remembers calling her “mother” by accident after falling asleep on her shoulder as they rode in a carriage to the Luminous Academy. He remembers that she wiped his tears as he faced the crowd of adepts and apprentices on the Academy’s wide lawn and suddenly felt how shabby his much-mended, hand-me-down best clothes were. He does not remember her name. He remembers standing in a little group of fifteen other boys and girls, all his age. He remembers that they talked easily to each other, and that he stood apart. He remembers that the adepts gave them new robes that day, and threw out their old clothes. One of his younger brothers could have used those clothes. He remembers the forefinger of a very old adept, a woman with a fine spiderweb of wrinkles on her face, dipping into a glass bowl full of light and drawing a circle on his forehead.

            He remembers another lady adept introducing him to a boy two years older than him, yet no taller. His hair was brown, then, but his eyes already glinted gold. The bridge of his nose was dusted with freckles, and he had the widest smile for Kozzy that he’d ever seen. “Kozmotis,” said Master Solana, “This is Sandren. He is one of our star apprentices, and has distinguished himself even as a second-year. He will be your mentor, guiding you through the world of the Luminous Academy. Never fear to ask him for help.”

            “You can call me Sandy,” the boy had said.

            “You can call me Kozzy,” he had replied, shyly ducking his head.

Pitch exhales sharply, shaking himself from his reverie. No more memories today. Oh, that one moment couldn’t be the seed to all the rest, could it? Two boys, introducing themselves to each other, one open as light should be, the other by nature inclining to shyness and hiding—a dark boy, even then. What a little thing, to lead to five hundred years of searching, five hundred years of mystery, five hundred years of pain, five hundred years of love and loneliness!

He had learned later that the adepts used sand-scrying to match mentors to mentees. Had something gone wrong, then, when the sand matched him and Sandy? Perhaps it was trying to say they should never come together. But Light cannot lie. It makes no mistakes. Pitch threw back the covers of the bunk, angry. Yes, the hand of fate seemed all too heavy in his and Sandy’s case, but why? At the end of all their tens of thousands of days, they had both been mere boys. Ordinary! And now? The last of their orders, less human with each passing day, nearly the embodiment of dreams and nightmares!

“We ought to be constellations,” he mutters to himself, wrapping up in the thin blanket not because he feels cold, but because he knows Sandy had done the same thing hours ago. He presses the fabric to his face and inhales deeply, smiling when he is rewarded with a faint hint of Sandy’s scent.

 

***

 

            “How fares the Luciana, traveler?” the patrolman hails Sandy as the ship reaches the mouth of the Serene.

            “Beautifully, sir. I never saw a hair of her sister, though.”

            “All for the best, I’ve heard. Now, what business do you have on the Serene?”

            _It’s a river_ , Sandy thinks, _why do I need a reason? It belongs to everyone, doesn’t it?_ But he knows that now isn’t the time to get into arguments with people who work for the king, so he reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out the large, golden royal seal that had been given to him fifteen years ago.

            “Business of the lunar king,” he answers, hoping that the seal is still meaningful.

            The patrolman looks at him with more respect now, though he remains wary. “If you hold the seal, why are you not wearing it around your neck?”

            “I have been on a long journey, and it weighed heavily upon me.” _More true than he knows_. “If you would like to know why I hold the seal, please be good enough as to watch me for a moment.” The setting sun is huge, low, and red, and so this will be easy. He simply gathers some of the light around his hands—no good for bottling, since distractions are all around, but good enough to show that he can do this.

            The patrolman’s jaw drops as Sandy’s golden hair and eyes, as well as the light around his hands, click into place in his mind. “The Dreamweaver! A thousand apologies, your Luminousness. We had no idea you would get here so soon.”

            Sandy lets the light go and nods at the patrolman as he waves the ship past. He’s glad that his letter seems to have been received without incident, but the presence of the patrol troubles him. The Lunar Kingdom is not at war—even his quick glances at the king’s letters would have told him that—so why the increased security? What would have happened if he had not been carrying the royal seal?

 

            Once the ship is out of sight of the patrol boat, Sandy goes below decks to wake up Pitch. With the prismatic effusion of the sunset spread across the sky over their heads, they move the ship slowly up the Serene with light touches of magic while watching its cultivated banks slip by. Sandy sighs and leans his elbows on the railing, glad to no longer be pushing the ship along at speed, and glad to have someone helping him in the task now.

            “You can tell when I’m moving the boat,” Pitch notes after they smoothly switch control once more. “That is supposed to be impossible, you know.”

            “Hmm. Undetectable shadow-magic and ungatherable starlight.” Sandy smiles as he looks out on broad fields of ripening grain. “Amazing what a few centuries of practice will do. Then again, you always make the ship list to port, so I could just be paying attention to that.”

            “I suppose you could be.” Pitch looks up at the sky through his dark glasses. “But I don’t think that’s what you’d say in Shining.”

            They let the banks pass by in silence for a little while. A few ducks and other waterfowl briefly appear as silhouettes against the deepening blue of the sky before landing on the water with quiet splashes. Sandy can read nothing in their patterns save for the beginning of the great pull of autumn’s migration. This, more than anything else, impresses upon him that he is no longer on the Isle of Dreams. No matter that he has spent more time on this river than most people are able to in their lifetimes, he is still a stranger to it as it is now. More seems to change between every visit than he would have thought possible in his youth. With what he’s seen on the journeys to the city he takes every five or ten years, he’s come to feel that the Lunar Kingdom (strange for a place named so) has lost all its cycles of time, and is instead progressing faster and faster upon a straight line to some unknowable destination.

            Even the fields have changed. “These farms seem enormous,” he remarks to Pitch. “I’d have sworn there were more farmhouses in the fields the last time I passed this way.”

            “There were,” Pitch says, taking off his glasses. “You can see the foundation of one that was razed right…there.” He points, but Sandy just shakes his head after trying to find where Pitch’s finger was indicating.

            “It’s too dark for me now. But—razed? That seems very strange to me. Unless the earth adepts have discovered some very impressive new way of working with crops, the number of them that would be needed to maintain this amount of land would be pretty crowded in one house. And, well, it was my impression at my last visit that the king wouldn’t have been too keen on allowing earth adepts to own so much of the farmland on the Serene, more fool he. After all, Verd hasn’t had a famine or even a food shortage for as long as I’ve been alive.”

            “Don’t worry yourself over the living conditions of earth adepts. Don’t even worry about the living conditions of native Verdans. None of them own any part of the land you see.”

            “None?” Sandy turns to Pitch in surprise. “But Verdans or their descendants have always owned some of the farmland here. How do you know, anyway? I doubt you did a survey of every district.”

            “Not I, but someone did. The king ordered a census five years ago. There were Verdans here then. Some newcomers, some that had been here for generations, intermarrying with Seleneans, even an earth adept or two. Now there aren’t.”

            “What? How? Why?”

            “New laws. Only Seleneans who can prove all their grandparents were Seleneans can own land in the Lunar Kingdom now. And if someone had eyes a certain shade of green…well, nothing could really help them, no matter how much they swore to their grandmothers’ honor.

            “Most of them left, going back to Verd, though for some I suppose it was hard to go back to somewhere they’d never been. Some went on to Windburne. Maybe even a few went to Oceana or someplace in the Empire of the Five Beacons, if they could stand such long journeys by sea.

            “A few stayed, of course. I’ve seen them. Dependent gardeners now, mostly. Hired hands.”

            “Why? Why, why, ten thousand times why? I knew the king was obsessed with his own bloodline, but why this…I don’t even have a word for it. The Lunar Kingdom has never been like this! We prided ourselves on our openness! The light adepts were proud when a foreigner was found as a suitable apprentice!”

            Pitch pauses for a long while before answering, even going up to kindle a flame in the lamp at the bow as he gathers his thoughts. Only a bloom of lighter blue in the west remains of the day, and the moon has not yet risen, leaving the stars and the few lights in the houses on the shores to provide some slight illumination. “The king…knows that. He has even carefully looked through his histories—or so the papers say—and has found that the Lunar Kingdom started to become vastly more open just before the Dimming. Someone writes very convincingly for him that the reason there are no new light adepts is that there are too few true Seleneans left. He’s been doing all he’s done in the name of light—your name, Sandy.”

            “The thrice-benighted darktalker!” Pitch watches Sandy’s small hands clench into fists. “I knew he was a fool, and I knew he had strange ideas about purity and control, but to drag the idea of the light adepts into this!” He looks up at the stars and takes a few deep breaths to calm himself, relaxing his fingers after a few moments. “Thank you for telling me this now, Pitch. I’m sure it would have done no one any good if I had learned these things in the presence of the king. I wasn’t suspecting civility to involve quite so much lying on this visit, though.” His smile at Pitch is wry and strained. “What must the people think of me now?”

            Pitch raises a hand as if to brush his fingers through Sandy’s hair before recalling once again that such actions are forbidden between them now. He lets his hand drop to the railing and grips it tightly, looking out over the darkened fields once more. “They still love you, Sandy. How could they not? You bring them dreams. For Seleneans, your dreams are the only reminder they have that this was once a great realm for magic.” He sighs. “There is a deep hunger for magic in this land, Sandy. It was why the appearance of the Frost boy caused such an uproar. The people know deep in their hearts that there should be…more of a shine on things than there is right now. For travelers like me, the difference between the Lunar Kingdom and other lands is harsh and troubling. Only in dreams does this land appear as it should be.

            “I expect that once we are in the city, you will find that you hold more sway than you ever imagined among every person that is not the king. Why else would he use you the way he has? No, Sandy, they do not hate you for what the king is doing, because they believe him. They love you, and they know that more magic is needed to make your job easier, and so they tolerate increasingly desperate measures. Their love for you and the value they place on your dreams are the only reasons that your dreams, combined with the increasing political tension, have not led to open revolt. At least, such has been my impression.”

            “That’s why the reaction was so extreme when they thought you had stolen the books, wasn’t it? They’ve elevated me, the light adepts, and our history to a place we shouldn’t hold.” Sandy holds his hands over the side of the boat, letting the slight breeze run through his fingers. “And I can feel the truth in what you say about magic being strangely thin on the ground here. But it’s been like this for a long time now. I remember…I remember sensing a change beginning before I realized I wasn’t aging. It started with your banishment. I thought then it was just, oh, sorrow. Heartsickness. Bitterness. Frustration. Emotions that a light adept must let go of when working with the light. As time passed, and the sense of dullness didn’t go away, I thought that the problem might just be that I was getting older. Losing my sense of wonder. Nevermind that light adepts, working wonders, keep their sense of wonder, and I was beginning to realize I wasn’t getting older at all. By then of course the light adepts were struggling to discover why there had been no new apprentices found for several years. That overshadowed everything we did. I never spoke with anyone about how I felt because there seemed to be bigger problems. Now, though, it seems fairly clear that both issues might be related.”

            “You really didn’t talk to anyone? Not when there were still so many light adepts to talk to?” Pitch’s voice is quiet. “Not about the magic, that’s secondary. But about your emotions.”

            “Pitch. Of course not. I wasn’t supposed to have them—in general, perhaps they might be occasionally acceptable, but for that particular incident, I was supposed to be proud. Happy. They never knew, and even if they did, they would have assumed that your turning to the shadows would have quashed any lingering tenderness I once held for you. And besides—who would I have bared my soul to, once you were gone?”

            “For a light adept, you’re awfully secretive.”

            “For a shadow adept, you’re awfully candid.”

            Inky water softly slaps the sides of their vessel as they move it slowly through the deep central channel of the Serene. They pass through the open bascule bridge of a sleepy town—Ladyneck, Sandy thinks, or maybe Sun-on-Stone, depending on how far they’ve come. Maybe even Brinebath, if it had grown enough to build such a bridge since his last visit. Probably Brinebath, actually. They’re not travelling very quickly, and they haven’t passed any other towns of size. _No more need for ferrymen with water in their blood_ , he muses.

            “That bridge will be gone within three springs,” Pitch comments as they clear the pylons, looking back at the retreating town.

            “Why do you say that?”

            “The floods on the Serene have been getting worse and worse over the past few years. Everyone was talking about it when I inadvertently arrived at their peak several months ago. It didn’t ease my welcome to the city, even if my banishment had been made invalid by some legal modifications of a century or so ago. When I gained access to the Great Library I looked up the records out of curiosity. Everyone was right. The floods are getting worse.

            “And that bridge—it’s just stones, and mortar, and planks. Pebbles, sand, and twigs. The Serene—”

            “The Serene is the river of the Lunar Kingdom,” Sandy says, voice lilting as he speaks the words to a lesson he learned a very long time ago. “The Serene waxes and wanes as does the moon, and ebbs and flows with the moon. The Serene is not named for the face she wears from one day to the next, but for her never-ending flow, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. She is serene because she does what is good for all, and is not troubled by what is good for one. She is serene because she knows she may never be thwarted, and she does nothing that should be thwarted.”

            “That’s nothing from the Luminous Academy,” Pitch notes.

            “Oh—true. I think it was something our housekeeper taught me, when I was a very little child in the City of the Moon. Funny that I should still remember it. I don’t remember the housekeeper’s name or face now. I do recall associating her with the Serene for a while, though. I wonder if she meant me to.”

            “Hmm. Well, you see why I say the bridge won’t last then. You could tell when passing through it. There wasn’t a single touch of any magic in all of its construction. Not the skills of the adepts, nor those of master craftsmen. From start to finish, no one involved in the creation of that bridge knew anything about water or stone. Maybe it would last long enough to make the incompetence attendant upon its building unclear if the river was not flooding so badly now, but there you have it.”

            “To be fair,” replies Sandy, “If I was a river flowing through the Lunar Kingdom, carrying news of all the changes the king has forced upon the people, I might feel as though I needed to flood too.” He yawns.

            “And I fully expect you to tell the king that in your own inimitable way. Right now though, don’t you think you ought to get some rest? I can keep up the pace we’re going right now—and yes, I will be able to keep the ship from running into the banks. We should reach the City of the Moon around dawn.”

            “Yes—I’ll try to get a little sleep. Not that this boat is conducive to _that_ at all.” He twists to one side and then the other, initiating a series of soft cracks from his back. “I can’t wait to get to my house in the city. To a real bed, and a real bath, and to really wash my hair…”

            Pitch smiles. “Haven’t you been keeping clean by magic?”

            Sandy waves his hand dismissively. “It’s a vile misuse of the powers of Light, and an incredibly poor substitute for large quantities of hot water. But it did prevent me from getting so cranky and smelly that you would have been forced to throw me off the boat, so I guess that must count for something.”

            “Cranky and smelly? I thought that’s how old people were supposed to be?”

            Sandy sighs. “Yes, well, I suppose the two-year difference in our ages is large and dramatic enough for me to be considered old compared to you, since otherwise after a few centuries you would be mature enough to realize that bringing it up isn’t exactly the height of humor anymore.”

            “Well my other response would have been to stick my face in your hair to ascertain fully whether the light magic has been working or not.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Pitch realizes this was the wrong thing to say. The expression of amusement leaves Sandy’s face and he looks away from Pitch once more, leaning his arms on the railing.

            “Pitch. Please don’t joke about physical contact between us. I know that what was done to you before your initiation gave you good cause to care little for the light adepts, and that becoming a shadow adept would lead you to care even less, but now I am the light adepts. And you know, you _know_ , that contact would harm both of us. And it would prevent me from remaining a conduit for light. If you’ve ever cared for me, if you’ve ever cared for light, if you’ve ever cared that I care for light, don’t joke about doing the one thing that really threatens Light as a discipline and way of life.”

            “I’m sorry,” Pitch says, looking up at the spaces between the stars. “I would never wish for you to be afraid of me. I won’t joke about it anymore.” _But talk of touching is all I have now and humor helps me pretend it doesn’t hurt_. “It’s just that being around you almost lets me forget everything, return to our days in the Luminous Academy—forget why I felt I needed to turn to shadow.” He says this last almost inaudibly.

            Sandy turns back to him then. “I don’t think you should forget that, Pitch. I never did.” His face softens. “Anyway. I will go down to get some sleep soon, and I trust you to guard me then. Just as I’ve trusted you on this whole journey. I know you don’t want to harm me…maybe I am just an old adept reacting badly to talk of what he can’t do.” He smiles a little. “There’s really something very absurd about all of this, isn’t there?”

            “Or mythic.”

            “Myths don’t remember the times they had to deal with each other’s bouts of flu or poison ivy.”

            Pitch laughs. “Well, be sure to put those things in there the next time you’re telling starstories.”

            Sandy’s smile grows wider, but then he appears to recall something. “Speaking of stories, I never got the ending to one earlier, when we were still talking about the Verdans. If they’re not tending these huge farms, how are the Seleneans managing it?”

            “It’s not a very good story.” Pitch shrugs. “But it’s simple enough. An inventor, Nicholas St. North, has come up with several machines that do the work of dozens of people. The farmers can get them practically for free if they can show that they are shorthanded due to having to take on ‘abandoned’ farmland.”

            “Nicholas St. North…” Sandy muses. “His name sounds familiar. Was he a toymaker?”

            “Was, and still is, among other things,” Pitch replies. “You’ll probably meet him. He’s a great favorite of the king now.”

            “I can only hope the king isn’t a favorite of his.” Sandy stands and heads over to the door to the cabin. “Wake me before we enter the city proper, please. Or if any guards need to be spoken with. I don’t want them to have any reason to notice you, even if you do disguise yourself as someone ordinary. I’ll need to be awake to give us a reason to put in at the Celestial Docks, in any case.”

            “Yes, yes. Now rest. You’ll be dealing with courtiers tomorrow, you know.”

            Sandy makes a face before heading below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus! I really don't have any excuse.
> 
> I'm also sorry if the geography of this world is not yet clear. I'm working on that. I bought a beach ball specifically to map out this world's continents.


	4. House on Fountain Square/The Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy arrive in the city; Sandy realizes their quest is going to be a lot more complicated than he thought. He reads a journal kept by one of the last few light adepts and remembers what happened right before Kozzy's initiation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO. If you feel you are a particularly sensitive soul, I caution you that when the Rays of the Sun is described, it will be used in short order. Only the aftermath is described in detail, but...
> 
> Light prevents its adepts from causing real harm to others, does it not?

            Apparently accompanied only by porters—who bowed and scraped when they saw the royal seal and seemed baffled that Sandy had not brought more luggage—Sandy arrives at the house in Fountain Square, his spirits lifting with the growing daylight and the fact that at least this part of the city has not changed. The honey-colored limestone still lends a sleepy-afternoon air to all the buildings when the sun hits them, and in the early morning the loudest sound is still the eternal plash and rush of the Great Moon Fountain.

            He sighs. Now is not the time to take comfort in nostalgia. Much must be done today, and most of it will be made fantastically more inconvenient as soon as his presence in the city becomes known. There is no doubt in his mind that a few of the porters he didn’t need are spreading the news of his arrival faster than the wind could carry it. He bids those he did hire to bring his boxes of light (and Pitch’s case of shadow, though they don’t know that) into the tall house, whose door opens not with a key but with a word.

            After they set everything down in the entry hall, Sandy pays them, and they all tip their hats and set off, possibly to return to the docks to seek further work, but more probably to go and tell more than a few people that they met the Dreamweaver. Sandy frowns. If only there was someone to stand at the door to firmly tell anyone who showed up to go away until he was ready to deal with them—but then that was the trouble of arriving almost unannounced. No arrangements had been made to provide him with a household staff. In the abstract, that had seemed desirable, since on the Isle of Dreams he certainly didn’t need any servants, but now, in the city, the bustle and press of people he had glimpsed the stirring hints of in the morning remind him that appearances and the pace of life here require him to be somewhat less self-sufficient. He runs his hands through his hair so that it sticks up in all directions. Clothes, food, transportation, communication, and probably a dozen other things were all demanding to be dealt with in a city way, all his knowledge of the city was ten years out of date, and the one person he felt comfortable asking, he had to pretend wasn’t with him.

            Had this seemed like a starstory on the island? Well, it certainly didn’t now. He and Pitch couldn’t just _go_ to the library, couldn’t just _go_ to see the king. There were procedures to be followed, practicalities to be dealt with, and none of that had ever been his forte. As a young light adept he had had a different system to work with, and as the only light adept he had been able to ignore everything in favor of letting the court figure out how to deal with all that involved both him and bureaucracy.

            So preoccupied is he with the endless array of vague and yet extremely necessary tasks ahead of him that he doesn’t startle when Pitch appears in the hall, seemingly out of nowhere. For a moment there’s an eerie flicker of darkness surrounding him that seems out of place in the brightly lit entryway, but this soon vanishes, and the only aura surrounding Pitch is the delicious aroma of fresh-baked pastry.

            “I took a detour on the way over,” he explains, gesturing to the white paper bag in his hand. “Apple turnover?”

            Sandy’s mouth waters at the smell of them—he rarely felt the motivation to make pastry on the island, though he loves it so—but considering that Pitch is supposedly keeping a low profile, he has to ask. “Did you pay for them?”

            “Yes, I did. No one expects to see a shadow adept this early in the morning, and curiously enough I don’t think I was the most suspicious person waiting around for that particular bakery’s firstfruits of the day. I daresay I may have even looked more normal and healthier than some of them—very young, very richly dressed people, you know, that don’t actually sleep.”

            Sandy takes one of the turnovers from the bag. “Army wine?”

            “Army sugar’s more common now. Interestingly, it started to become nearly ubiquitous after the laws against Verdans settling here permanently were passed. After all, it’s not as if Verd’s isolated valleys contain some very large and suspiciously well-tended groves of openeye trees.”

            Sandy sighs. Here, yet again, is another example of the complicated system he has decided to jump back into with so little information. True, it was probably only equal in complexity to the Isle of Dreams, but he had had centuries to learn the isle’s rhythms. Now, he must reintegrate into the city with no time to learn all the variables of king and current Verdan and current Selenean culture, the ways machines and magic interact with policy, flow of trade in the light and in the dark, and all the grand things that have somehow led to him, the last light adept, standing in the City of the Moon, holding an apple turnover that the last shadow adept was able to buy for him without being questioned.

            Ah, yes. The apple turnover. At least there was one easily comprehensible thing about this situation. “Thank you for bringing me this,” Sandy says, before biting into the pastry. It’s still warm, the sugar glaze gooey on the light, flaky shell, the fillings’ sweetness perfectly balanced by the natural tartness of the apples and the spice-heat of cinnamon.

            He hums with pleasure, eating the rest of it at a pace that seems languid to him, but by the time he looks up, licking his fingers to capture every last smear of sugar, Pitch is only halfway done nibbling his way through his own treat.

            Pulling his forefinger out of his mouth, Sandy shoots Pitch an odd look. He had met his eyes as soon as he looked up, and so—“Were you watching me eat?”

            “What an absurd question,” Pitch replies, now diverting more attention to his own breakfast.

            Sandy rolls his eyes. “Well, thank you again. That’s the best apple turnover I can ever remember eating.”

            “I could tell,” Pitch murmurs. “And that was exactly what I intended to provide for you.”

            “I’m imagining you now, in your time away from the library, scouring your way through the city, looking for the best bakery.”

            “Hmm. Well, if there was anyone qualified to find the city’s best-kept secret—”

            “And keep it that way, it would be you. All right. I feel much readier to face the day now, though I expect to start getting callers as soon as that part of the upperclass who do sleep wake up.” He frowns and runs a hand through his hair again. “It’s going to be harder than I thought, Pitch. I forgot how many people I’d have to interact with, at least initially. And don’t say I don’t have to. I do. This is about more than Light and Shadow now. It’s about everyone in the Lunar Kingdom. And I promised to serve them when I took my oaths.”

            “I wasn’t going to dissuade you,” Pitch says, brushing crumbs off his fingers and walking over to the case that holds his collected shadows. He flicks open the brass clasps and lifts the ebony lid. His fingers quickly test each seal and the integrity of the small metal bottles. “I don’t think anyone has ever succeeded in stopping you from doing something once you set your mind to it. I would like to remind you, however, that, as you said on the island, you were the king’s personal dreamweaver once. Certainly you knew something of dealing with politics then.”

            “That was centuries ago, and I assure you I didn’t know a thing. My talents were valued enough that any faux pas I committed were ignored.”

            “And they are even _more_ valued now.” Pitch points out.

            “The fact remains, though, that I don’t want visitors, I’m going to have visitors, and I can’t send them away.”

            “And why not?”

            Sandy opens one of the crates and begins to remove bottles of light from the straw they were packed in, taking them four at a time into a large study just off the main hall. “Because I’m not supposed to be mysterious or rude,” he calls back to Pitch.

            Pitch scoffs. “You’ve been living alone on a distant island for over three hundred years, communicating with the city through dreams. If you were going to try to not be mysterious, you might have thought to stay in the city, at least. And who cares about rudeness? Unless you are literally planning to spit in the face of anyone who tries to see you, no one’s going to be troubled. And no one’s going to scold you. No one owns us anymore.

            “Besides, you can see the future. I’m pretty sure rudeness is a required trait for a prophet.”

            “Sun and Moon, Pitch, so is martyrdom! And I’m certainly not interested in that.” He leaves the hall with the empty crate, taking it through the house to set it by the back door.

            Walking back, he glances around the kitchen. It’s dusty, yes, but with only a week’s worth of dust, not a decade’s. And there had been something about the study—yes! That was it! The furniture hadn’t had sheets over it. There had been an arrangement made with an agency on his last visit to maintain this house. They must have sent some people over to get it ready as soon as his letter reached the king. _And I can ask them about other details_ , Sandy thinks in relief. One problem solved. The only question now was when they might be coming back. Probably as soon as the king knew that Sandy had arrived—the porters!

            He hurries back to the hall, which he finds empty. The study is empty as well—where is Pitch?—oh. One of the drawing rooms off the hall is still heavily curtained. That’s where Sandy finds Pitch, dozing on the largest sofa, which still obliges him to dangle his feet over the side. “Wake up!” Sandy says, pushing at his shoulder with a throw pillow.

            Pitch opens his eyes a sliver, his expression long-suffering.

            “I’m pretty sure some people are going to be sent over to clean this place up. And soon. You can’t be visible when they do.”

            He stands up, stretching. “All right, all right. Show me the bed to hide under.”

 

            There’s no literal hiding under the bed this time, but Sandy leaves Pitch safely in the attic not a moment too soon. The team of three men and two women from Dowdsley’s Caretaking knock on the door only minutes after Sandy locks the attic door. When Sandy lets them in, he’s afraid he presents a rather unimpressive sight—all his clothes are at least ten years out of date and he doubts his hair could be smoothed down without serious effort at this point.

            The workers don’t act like they see anything other than his gold eyes, though, and they all behave extraordinarily deferentially towards him. The situation rapidly becomes incredibly uncomfortable for Sandy, and he’s half-tempted to lock himself in the attic as well. Instead, he settles on sitting in the ground floor study and pretending to go over a book of old records so that the caretakers will feel able to get about their business without constantly seeking his approval.

            The book Sandy’s chosen is the daily journal of Master Brillian, who held the position of Counselor of Light in the city until his death at the age of ninety-seven. He had been one of the last children to be chosen as light apprentices, and so while most of his journal entries deal with the management of other light adepts in the city and recording the various magical workings they performed, as time passes, more and more include anxious musings regarding the fate of the light adepts. One in particular takes Sandy back to those bitter days, as it describes a scene in which he was present.

 

            _Equinox again. Began the day sick with hope, now ending the day just sick. All of us were present at the fountain. Just sixteen now! And all of us old, so very old. Save for one. We made an eerie sight, I daresay. Fifteen old, old men and women and one young man, still fresh as the spring itself but older than all the rest of us. Master Sandren, the hero who banished the traitor from the city, the hero under whose influence no shadow adepts have been seen in the Lunar Kingdom for decades! I suppose the people might not find his immortality strange, but he does. We all do. And yet I also find it a comfort, for as long as he lives I can hope that the way of Light will not be lost._

_When the rest of us are dead, I imagine him alone at the spring Equinox, standing in front of a line of children, whispering the Shining words to each. I know a new apprentice must be found someday. If Light has abandoned us, we would know—wouldn’t we? What have we done?_

_Was it the traitor’s doing? That mixed being—perhaps he has sullied all of us through his actions. Perhaps he must die before new apprentices can be found._

_Rumors have reached even my ears that the shadow adepts are also dying out._

_I am not young enough anymore to say with confidence that this is a good thing. If I was asked to give their numbers now (of which no one has ever been certain) I would say “sixteen” without hesitation._

_At ninety-five I am too old to explain why I would say this. But the light-paths are stronger than ever in my mind, and I will not doubt myself. I do not read signs with Sandren’s ease, but I will not doubt myself. Does Master Sandren see what I see? I must ask him. I must tell him._

_When? To tell the truth I fear him. I fear him as my elder, I fear him for his youthful appearance. I fear him for his talent. I fear him because he is a hero. He sees in me a bureaucratic toady and I see in him the face I would give Light if it deigned to take a human face. With his history, surely he must hate the shadow adepts more than anyone, but—oh let me not be struck dead for writing it—I think they have much in common with us._

_The ramblings of an old fool! But I must tell Sandren. I must. Surely I will find the courage someday. If things get worse I know I will. Anyway, what should I fear? Sandren has never been party to the Mercy of the Light, and the others are too old to administer it._

_Yes, I will tell him this non-information. This blank and hazy revelation._

_Oh, lest I forget: the business of the day._

_Light apprentices found:_

            The next two pages are left blank, and Sandy can almost hear Brillian’s dry, bitter laughter (trailing off into a cough) as he turns the leaves.

            He stares at the blank pages, frowning. Brillian had never told him what he thought. Sandy would like to protest that his fears were unjustified, but he cannot do that while being honest with himself. Counselor of Light _was_ a bureaucratic position and while it existed, Sandy had not admired it. And by the age of one hundred fourteen, he had been well on his way to withdrawing from ordinary life and had let the legends about him accumulate without ever bothering to actively correct them.

            Drumming his fingers on the desk, he flips through the rest of the pages with his other hand. This is the last journal on the shelf, and he is morbidly curious to see the last entry.

            The last two are on the same page, both very short. The second to last reads:

 

            _Current number of Light Adepts: 14_

            The last is dated for the following day, and reads:

 

            _Current number of Light Adepts: 13_

_Let it be recorded that this is the only time I have foredated information. May it not preclude me from singing the Long Song._

 

            Sandy sighs as he closes the book. He is not surprised by Master Brillian’s retreat into duty. After all, didn’t he make the same choice and stand by it for centuries?

            Perhaps more interestingly, it seems to Sandy as though he might not have been especially secretive for a light adept. _Wonderful_ , he thinks. _I’m sure that will make our investigation_ much _simpler_. He finds that this information does not make him angry. It does not even surprise him much. Instead, it wearies him. For his entire apprenticeship he was told that as a light adept it would be against his nature to keep secrets. That no lies could be spoken in Shining. That no actions of a light adept could case anyone to come to harm.

            All those things had only remained true in the most technical sense. It was against his nature to keep secrets, but he could act against his nature. No lies could be spoken in Shining, but the listener could be made to reach false conclusions. And as for the impossibility of a light adept causing harm to another—well, there was a reason Sandy was never party to the Mercy of the Light. He swallows, determined not to let his gorge rise even as the memories do.

 

***

 

As a young light apprentice, he learned that while most infractions committed by light apprentices or adepts were repaid with various kinds of service, occasionally an offense would be committed that was serious enough that the perpetrator would be called upon to face the Mercy of the Light.

            No trials were held in these cases, as the nature of the Mercy made such proceedings unnecessary. The case they were told about was this: A light adept had once stolen a night’s worth of moonlight, making many workings impossible. Two adepts were found that refused to answer the questions put to them in Shining, and so both were considered suspects. Both were brought out to the great courtyard and their hands tied to the mercy stake. When the wielder of the Rays of the Sun reached for that item to begin the Mercy’s judgment of the one, he was not even able to pick it up. But when he went to administer the Mercy to the other, he was able to grasp hold of it and raise it toward the other’s back. The wielder was almost able to complete a full stroke, and though the thieving adept only felt the lightest of taps (for Light is merciful) everyone knew he was the thief.

            Afterwards, though, they did not treat him any differently, for he had faced the Mercy of the Light and thus he had made full amends.

            Sandy is now certain that this story is a lie. But he had believed it as an apprentice. He had believed it even after seeing the Rays of the Sun.

            The Rays of the Sun had a handle of polished blondwood, in which the thicker cotton rope that would become the rays was attached. After about a foot, the cotton branched into four rays, which then each branched into three very thin rays, making twelve in all. The thinnest rays ran on for about two feet. In the glass case that held it, it was arranged in a starburst so that it should most resemble its namesake. However, it was not merely the branching rope that lent the Rays of the Sun its name. For when it was brought into the sun, the cubical glass beads knotted at intervals along the rays seemed to shine with their own internal light until the holder seemed to have the sun of a blazing noon in his or her hand.

            As an apprentice, he had never seen anyone called to face the Mercy of the Light. It and the Rays of the Sun might as well have been as insubstantial as dreams.

            As a light adept, he learned that such dreams might come true.

 

            It happened almost two years after he became a full adept. He was living in the City of the Moon—living in the Palace of the Moon, in fact, working as the king’s personal dreamweaver. No one so young had ever gained so prestigious a position before, and his gentle looks that contrasted with his dry humor quickly made him a favorite at court. He had power, money, fine clothes (in which he shamelessly indulged) and, with the approaching solstice that would herald Kozzy’s becoming a full adept, soon he would have his lover near him with no more masters to disturb or interrupt them. They would have a fine house near the Palace, all filled with golden light. They would have a massive bed covered with the finest silk sheets and there they would wake every dawn, looking into each other’s eyes and beginning the day with a long, lazy kiss.

            He had dreamed of this life, or something that felt like it, two days before he got the message. A glorious dream! More vivid than the waking world by far, full of beings that trailed light with every step and crowded by luminous objects that all represented love, the kind of love that  would lead a lover to give his life yet was strong enough to bring him back, the dream was dizzying in sensation. A light-dream. More powerful than any he’d dreamt before. And through it all was the flavor of a June dawn.

            For two days he floated high on the wonder of that dream, almost feeling as though it had been created especially for him, and the rest of the Lunar Kingdom was just lucky to have had the chance to experience it. And they had, he was sure of it. When he walked through the streets the sounds of the city had changed. There was more music, less shouting. More wistful looks, less frantic running. Flowers were threaded through fences, and some fences were torn down. Some of the torn down fences were used to make bonfires in public squares. For two days, the city danced, and burned, and sang, and Sandy’s blood danced, and burned, and sang with it.

            Then, on the afternoon of the second day, he returned to his apartment in the palace to find a letter waiting for him. It bore his name and the seal of the Luminous Academy, but the seal was smeared, as if the writer could not wait for the wax to cool.

 

_Master Sandren,_

_Kozmotis has faced the Mercy. The expiation did not go as expected. Come at once. Your mentee needs you. We cannot make him see reason._

_~~Sandren I still cannot believe it.~~_

_\--Master Solana_

 

            He was but a poor horseman, but he hired the fastest horse he could find and left the city that afternoon. He rode all day, all night, and most of the next day, stopping only to change mounts. He did not eat. He did not sleep. He did not dream.

            When he arrived at the Luminous Academy he leapt from his horse, disregarding the aches in his legs and backside. He set off in a limping run through the great courtyard, trusting the apprentices on ostler duty would take care of the animal. He glanced down at the ground and noticed that some of the sand around the mercy stake was stained a rusty brown. Too much. His vision blurred and his legs felt weaker than water, but he refused to fall. He continued toward the halls of the masters, his legs regaining their strength and his vision clearing, though as it sharpened everything seemed to take on a reddish hue.

            He slammed open the massive doors of the halls of the masters without a word, without a gesture, without any refinement of power. Let the Light protect anyone in his way. Let it be merciful once more. “ _Where is he!?_ ” he screamed in Shining. “ _Where is Kozzy? Tell me now or so help me I will tear down this academy brick by brick until I find him! I will tear it down!_ ”

            Master Phosphrae hurried up to him, and tentatively placed her hand on the heavy gold brocade of his sleeve. “Please, Master Sandren.” Her voice was soft and nervous, and Sandy forced himself to take a calming breath when he saw the fear in her eyes. “Kozzy is in his room in the twelfth-year dorms. Let me take you to him.”

 

            “Has he asked for me?” Sandy asked as they walked down the last long corridor.

            “He has not asked for anything.” Master Phosphrae looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. “He has only refused what we have offered.” She turned to him, nervously twisting her hands. “Oh Master Sandren,” she whispered, “I do not think this was supposed to happen. But save for me and Master Solana, no one else will admit it. Everyone else is saying over and over again that this was just and right and by our laws it was—but I fear what has been done here. I have not seen such a sight since I was a little child—I thought I would be safe from such things as a light adept.”

            “You should have been. He should have been!” Sandy replied. They stopped walking, having arrived at the door to Kozzy’s room. “Where is the lock?”

            “We…we removed it just in case we needed to get in quickly. Master Sandren, may I please go attend to my duties now? I—I’m not supposed to be here.”

            Sandy nodded. Master Phosphrae pressed his hand before returning to her preparations for the Solstice Welcome. “Forgive me,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “Forgive us all.”

            His hand shook as he reached for the doorknob, yet he did not hesitate to open it. Kozzy was alive, and so surely the worst visions of his brain would be dispelled by reality—would they not?

 

            Kozzy sat on a stool, staring out the window. When Sandy entered, he did not turn.

            “Kozzy?” Sandy’s voice was tentative.

            “Sandy.” He could barely speak above a whisper, his voice was so hoarse. “Did they tell you what I did?”

            “No.”

            “Three nights ago, or maybe four—I have not really slept, so my count may be off—I went to the light cellars. I took what I needed to fill the large dream-glass. I wanted to make a good dream. A dream of a future brighter than the sun. After the room for the dream glass was locked, I broke in with the new light and filled the dream-glass with the light I…stole, I guess. I thought I had a right to it but now I know that is not true.”

            “You succeeded in brewing the dream,” Sandy said, recalling the vision that had transformed him and the city for days.

            “I was…intemperate. They told me I had made trivial use of light. I had been improper. I had been…excessive. They were not sure how I had approached so near my initiation with such flawed thinking. Thankfully…my crime could be expiated if I faced the Mercy of the Light.” Kozzy fell silent, as if speaking even so much had already wearied him beyond measure.

            Sandy was at a loss for words. The silence stretched on like the night of the Winter solstice until Kozzy spoke once more.

            “Would you…like to see that mercy?”

            “No,” Sandy breathed. “Show me.”

            Moving slowly, Kozzy raised his hands to the collar of the plain, loose robe he wore that fell straight from his rigid shoulders to the floor. He unfastened the clasp and it collapsed in a heap behind the stool. Sandy inhaled sharply, and when he managed to breathe out again, he did so with a whimper.

            There was no unmarked skin on Kozzy’s back. The smoothness that had once only been marred by the little temporary half-moons made by Sandy’s blunt nails was now a mass of raw and oozing welts. Ten thousand shades of red forced themselves into Sandy’s vision, and he knew he was looking at the topography of hell. Did they say this was mercy? Did they say it in Shining? Their mouths should have burned as they tried to speak the word. Kozzy looked as though a madman had attempted to flay him.

            He wanted to look away, but as the moments passed, a feeling grew in him that he must witness this. He must remember every ragged flap of skin, every sickening intrusion of yellow or white into the already horrifying red. When he regained a small amount of his composure, he noticed that one of Kozzy’s shoulders looked as though it had already started to heal.

            “Kozzy…your right shoulder…”

            “That was where they put the sun-salve on me before I woke up and made them stop.”

            “You’ve—you’ve refused treatment?”

            “The Rays of the Sun stuck me thirty-nine times before it shattered in the wielder’s hand. It was dripping with my blood from the first blow. The drops that struck the crowd have been washed from their hands and faces. I suspect the stained clothing has been thrown out. The broken whip has been thrown away. Master Phosphrae told me that my blood has stained the sand of the courtyard, but it will be worn away soon enough. The sun-salve would heal my injuries so perfectly not even the faintest scar would remain. And now that I have faced the Mercy, I have been told that my initiation will proceed as if neither my crime nor my punishment happened at all.” Kozzy stood then, leaning on his desk as he finally turned to look at Sandy. “But both did happen. And to pretend otherwise would be a lie. And if I wish to serve the Light, I cannot make my very body a LIE, CAN I?”

            Sandy stepped toward him, wanting to comfort him but unsure of what to do when an embrace would only make things worse. “What are you going to do?” he asked quietly.

            Kozzy closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m so close. I—” he looked down at his hands and arms, the skin a clear warm gold, just a shade lighter than that of Sandy’s and the other masters’. His hair, now a fine dark blond, hung over his eyes, which shone gold in most lights. “I was so happy when I was chosen for the light. I wasn’t sure if I could ever be worthy of being a light adept, but with you helping me…everything was going so well.” He twisted his lips into something that might be called a smile. “From the front, I look exactly like I should at this stage. As though in a week I will drink the solstice lights and join in the song of the masters. Cast off my apprentice robes and put on the robe of a master. They have not said anything against me doing this, yet.” He swallowed. “The sun-salve still has time to work. They could force it on me, you know, since it is an aid to healing.”

            “But you want the scars.”

            “I want the scars, Sandy. When I cast off my apprentice robes I want all to see what the Mercy has done. Light may heal. But it also does. Not. Hide.”

            “I will stay with you, at your side, until your initiation. Afterwards we can both leave for the city. No one will do anything to you that you do not want them to do.”

            “Thank you,” Kozzy breathed as he returned to his stool.

            “But please, Kozzy. Let me wash the wounds. Let me bandage them. I don’t want to lose you to infection. _I will not use magic to heal you_. You will still have your scars.”

            There was a long pause. “All right,” Kozzy said. “I suppose it might help with the pain. And I cannot deserve that now, can I? My punishment is over, is it not?”

 

            While washing away the worst of the blood, Kozzy suddenly hissed and arched his back. Without thinking, Sandy called for whatever was causing the pain to come to him. The making of his Shining statement of earlier into a lie brought a stabbing pain behind his eyes, and he fought to keep from vomiting. When the pain began to subside, he found the thing he had called to him lodged in his palm, adding yet more blood to the day. It was a small chunk of glass, like a piece of a square bead. Sandy flung it into a corner of the room, the skittering sound it made on the floorboards sounding like a rattlesnake’s warning.

            After much painstaking work, the water wrung out from the washcloths Sandy had been using began to flow much clearer. “You should know,” he said, as he began the process of patting him dry, “That the dreams you brewed were the best I’ve ever had. You have great talent with light. You transformed the city. You transformed…me. I…I don’t think it is right that they called you to face the Mercy.” He wrapped gauze around him. “And even if I conceded that they had the right to do so, I cannot imagine why they were able to strike you so many times.”

            “Well, Light knows best, as they have told us.” Kozzy’s non-answer was perfect, Sandy had to admit. He had learned how to say nothing as well as any light adept.

            “Will you try to sleep now?” Sandy asked. “I will stop you from turning.”

            Kozzy nodded, and moved slowly over to his bed, where he lay down on his stomach with a groan only partially stifled.

 

            On the morning of the Solstice, Kozzy had been nowhere to be found. The horse Sandy had ridden to the Academy was gone from the stables, and Sandy had had the terrible feeling that the desperate good-night kiss Kozzy had given him might very well have been their last.

 

_No, Master Brillian_ , Sandy thinks, retreating to the present, _I do not think it was Kozzy who was the true traitor to the light._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Kozzy will be back much sooner this time. Well. Not Kozzy. Pitch. 
> 
> Also there will be a party in the next chapter? 
> 
> (And isn't it curious what Sandy said in anger, in Shining, when he was looking for Kozzy...)


	5. The Flower-Seller and the Toymaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy walks about the City of the Moon and shares light with those who need it. He meets a flower-seller with a curious family tree. A pair of silk gloves form the basis for a painful moment. Later, at a party, Sandy meets North and learns more about the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The industrial revolution is comin' for ya!

“‘Hide the door while I take a bath.’ Really, Sandy, it’s not that easy,” Pitch mutters to himself as he sits with his back against the front door of the house. “This place is next to a national landmark. It’s not like people are going to forget where it is.” Which isn’t to say he hadn’t been successful in doing what Sandy had asked him to do—at least mostly. No one so far had knocked _persistently_ at the door, and while there were more than a few cards that had been dropped through the mail slot scattered about on the newly polished marble tile, none of those leaving the cards had lingered near the door afterwards. “They are going to ask you about this later, you know,” he says, continuing his imaginary conversation. It was a terrible habit, and one he knew he needed to stop before Sandy discovered it—even though he was sure he wouldn’t be surprised. Pitch just didn’t want to seem that lonely. After all, Sandy had always been so calm, so composed, when Pitch visited the Isle of Dreams. Even after the terrible time when he had stayed away for a hundred years. When Pitch had returned, Sandy had been, as always, all smiles, all solicitousness. Ready to care for him, happy to talk. As if it hadn’t been a century since they had last seen each other.

            In some ways it was a comfort to him, to know that Sandy would never send him away. Some ways? It was at times the only comfort he had, and sometimes he refused to let himself be sure of it. After all, there had been the banishment. He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the door. The banishment did not count. It had not been Sandy’s idea.

            _I have seen you lose more tears than blood in battle_.

            Still, sometimes he thought he would like to have Sandy scream and rail at him—he deserved it—or their situation—which deserved it more. _Show me you feel at least some regret in sending me to the guest room_.

            Pitch scoffs at himself and opens his eyes. He had certainly brooded enough on all those things throughout the centuries. By now, the thoughts must have worn down grooves in the surface of his mind, like a hand tracing the light-knot on a piece of sandstone. Certainly there must be more constructive things to think about right now.

            _Like guarding the door_ , he thinks, wincing as someone knocks heavily against the wood, not bothering with the gold-plated knocker shaped like a stylized sun. He focuses all the power he can into telling whoever’s out there that nothing interesting is inside, wishing he had had the chance earlier to fortify himself with some of his collected shadows.

            “Maybe he is out.” The voice from outside is loud and clear even through the heavy door. A softer, indistinguishable voice answers it. “Well, I will leave invitation behind then, if you say this is how things are done. But maybe I should come back later to confirm? Would not be very good to have party without guest of honor.” The softer voice says something in mollifying tones, and after a brief pause, an envelope of heavy red paper flies through the mail slot, landing further inside the entryway than any of the other cards. A few moments after this, Pitch hears the clatter of carriage wheels moving away from the house. Strangely, though, he doesn’t hear any noise from the horses.

            He gets to his knees, leaning forward to gather the new envelope into the pile with the others. That done, he resumes sitting against the door, attempting to bring all his focus to hiding and concealment. It is both difficult and dull. The very house itself seems to resist his magic, and with no specific threat or seeker to counter, the work rapidly drains him. He listlessly stacks the cards and envelopes into a neat pile, from the largest on the bottom (the red envelope) to the smallest on the top. A few of the small visiting cards, he notes with amusement, have been treated to a light spray of perfume. _Good luck with that_. His amusement quickly vanishes, and he scowls, when he realizes he might very well wish them luck. Sandy deserves a companion, and he can’t stop being a shadow adept. The most vapid society belle or beau has a better chance with Sandy than he does—and not all of them are vapid.

            “This is not how someone over five hundred years old should be thinking,” he chastises himself. He straightens the envelopes again. How long had he been sitting here, anyway? What was taking so long?

            He imagines Sandy reclining against smooth white porcelain, his short stature making even an ordinary tub luxurious enough for him to stretch out his legs. He would have sighed as he sank into water that had poured from the shining brass faucet almost too hot for him to bear, steam rising from the surface and making the atmosphere of the bathroom hazy, diffusing the already soft light from the frosted glass of the windows. The heat of the water would have brought a flush to his soft, round face as he relaxed in the water, letting the weariness of the journey flow out of him. Perhaps the flush would have spread down his neck and across his chest as he warmed further, like roses blooming beneath warm golden skin. Yes, and he would have filled the tub deep, using soap in some clean scent—like vanilla, maybe—that would pile up in mountains of foam, concealing dimpled knees and smooth round belly and tender coral nipples. Oh, he would be well within his rights to pause for a moment like that, letting the water still around him, closing his eyes, his mouth relaxed in a slightly open smile. Then he would sink down further, of course, to let the water flow through his thick blond hair. It would float around his face like the sun’s corona, and when he sat back up again, it would fall down the back of his neck like heavy silk, the unruly strands at the hairline clinging to his neck in gilded arabesques. Then, and only then, would he begin to wash himself, deceptively delicate hands sliding over every inch of satiny skin. Pitch allows himself to dwell on the image of Sandy washing one of his arms, rinsing it with new, clear warm water, holding it above the foam so that the morning light changed the drops caught in the fine hairs into diamonds of the finest luster tossed upon cloth of gold—Pitch shakes his head to clear it. No, Sandy would probably _not_ be doing that. He would probably not be displaying the sweet rounded flesh of his limbs as for an audience, because he had none. He would probably not get out of the bath and ignore the towels, choosing instead to dry himself naked before the fire, the flickering light so casual in how it touched him. He would probably not languorously treat his skin with fine scented oils and smile at the deliberate slide of his fingers over skin that could never grow rough with such intimate care—

            “Pitch?” Sandy hums the tune the light adepts used to use for trance-breaking. “Are you all right?”

            “Hmm? Oh, yes, quite. I was just feeling…tired from the journey.”

            Sandy looks embarrassed. “Sorry it’s been so chaotic here this morning. And sorry I took so long. Can you believe it? After all that fussing about earlier, there’s still no hot running water in the house! One of my favorite inventions, and so unfortunately mysterious. I’m going to hire someone to solve that problem as soon as possible. Anyway, that’s my excuse. I had to heat water in the old copper pans over the fire just to get the water in the tub to tepid.

            “Frankly, I’m almost disappointed that you didn’t come up to check to see if I’d drowned or not. I mean, all we have in the way of soap is that plain stuff I brought from the island, it’s not like I could have been having a bubble bath.”

            Pitch stares at him. “I…don’t think it would be a good idea for me to interrupt you while you’re bathing.”

            “What? I meant that you would have yelled through the door or something. Anyway, I’m feeling much better now. Was it all right hiding the door?”

            Shaking his head, Pitch replies, “It was fine. I couldn’t stop them from leaving cards though. I was also able to hear a few of them talking. That red one on the bottom of the pile might be the most urgent. The person who left it said it was an invitation to an event tonight. I believe you’re meant to be the guest of honor.” Pitch stands up, handing the stack of paper to Sandy.

            He flips through the small cards with little interest, tossing them into a bowl on a small table standing against a wall in the entryway. The rest he goes through more slowly, reading each name and sending address carefully to check for those he recognizes. None seem urgent, and he places them in the bowl as well. Finally, he examines the red envelope. No name is written on its thick paper, and in fact the only identifying mark on the missive is the image of a stylized pine tree pressed into the sealing wax. “Is this rude?” He murmurs, almost to himself.

            “Strictly, yes,” Pitch says, yawning. “But only Nicholas St. North is known for using red envelopes like that. As you noted earlier—fame and talent smooth over many social snags.”

            Sandy smiles wryly and breaks the seal. Inside, the invitation is flawless. Sandy’s presence is requested at a formal dinner gathering that evening at eight o’clock. Within the thick paper bearing this meager information in beautiful calligraphy, however, is another note written on much thinner paper, in a plain draftsman’s hand.

 

            Most Honored Master Sandren,

 

                        Know it has been a great deal of time since you have come to the city, and perhaps you are less prepared for a visit than you had hoped. Forgive my presumptuousness, but I have included in this note the name and address of a quick and talented tailor whom you may wish to employ before this evening. We are very foolish in the city after all, Master Sandren—allow us to adorn you so your true talents may shine through. Mention my name and everything will be taken care of.

                        Permit me also to mention that entertainments like the one I am hosting tonight generally extend fashionably into the very late night. There will be dancing and music. While I wish to welcome you back to the city, I also must concede to the manners of the times. I hope you will be gracious enough to understand.

 

            Your servant,

                        Nicholas St. North

 

            Sandy stares at the note in astonishment before laughing and reading it aloud to Pitch. “Sun and Moon—he seems to think I’m some kind of ascetic! How in the world would I have gained that reputation?”

            Pitch smiles at him. “I have absolutely _no_ idea. I have no doubts that you will soundly disabuse them of that notion tonight, however.”

            “Or even before then.” Sandy’s eyes stray back to the address of the tailor. “I’ll try not to abuse North’s offer, but it is so, so tempting.”

            “You’re no longer worried about interacting with these people, then?” Pitch asks.

            Sandy’s face turns thoughtful. “I am still a little concerned,” he admits. “But I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I know they will excuse me if I’m a little strange. I’ll go, and meet the current cream of the city. They won’t need me to talk much. I’ll listen instead, and that will give me a better grasp on how I want to confront the king later. This party is just a formality. Tomorrow we can begin our real work at the Great Library.

            “Now. I do believe it is time for me to go shopping. Will you be fine staying here?”

            Pitch nods and rubs his face. “Yes. I think I’ll take a cold bath and then sleep for a while. If I’m going to manage to remain hidden in this city, I’ll need to be well-rested.”

            They say their farewells, and Sandy steps out once again into the city of his birth.

 

            In contrast to most places remembered from childhood, the city has grown overwhelmingly since the days of his youth. _Well, what can you expect, five hundred years on_ , Sandy thinks as he walks along Zephira’s Canal. Of course most of the facades would have changed by now. Of course most of the buildings would have been replaced. Even if they had been built to last a lifetime, they would have been replaced four times over since he was young. Even this canal, with its venerable, weathered, mossy stones is younger than he is.

            Still, there is much that is familiar, interspersed with the newer and newest, as if the city is a garden of ancient oaks interspersed with perennials and annuals. That house has a wall that is six hundred years old, while the other three are only fifty. That public well had stood for as long as anyone could remember even when he was a boy, and it will probably stand until it is the last remnant of this city, and will form the starting point for a new city yet to be imagined. The cobblestones around it are only about two hundred years old, though. Most of the ones around it before had been pulled up and thrown at the soldiers who had been told to come and supervise the fencing off of the well—which had lasted six weeks.

            As he walks on, he spies a coffee house he knows has been in continuous operation for three hundred years. He passes over a ring of bright white brick that used to denote the boundary of the main produce market in the city. The space has now been taken up by many very small stores selling highly expensive items. Glancing ahead, he sees the lighthouse at the old gate—it looks the same from a distance, but for a hundred and fifty years it has been a museum of itself, half a dozen buildings gathered around its base aping the original construction style.

            Throughout all the changes, though, Sandy makes his way to the given address without getting lost. Even though he has not walked much along the streets of the city for several decades—foolish, that, but he had never wanted to linger in the king’s presence for long, and he disliked being away from the dreamglass for more than a few days, even when that meant losing familiarity with his densest concentration of dreamers—the tailor, being prestigious, is located along one of the small and inconvenient winding streets in the heart of the city, where inertia now prevents any logical changes from being made.

            At the tailor’s, everything goes smoothly, save for when Sandy startles as the tailor casually touches him as he takes his measurements.

            “Is everything all right, Master Adept?” the neat, compact man asks.

            “You’ll pardon me, I have lived a solitary life apart from my visits to the city, and the last was over ten years ago.” It is mostly true. True enough, when the full truth would take at least all day and all night to explain.

 

            Having been assured that his clothes for the evening will be sent over early enough so that he will have plenty of time to get ready, Sandy decides to take a slightly circuitous route back to the house in fountain square. The streets are busier than ever at midday, and the contrast of the noise of the city with the silence of the Isle of Dreams presses upon him like a lead-lined cloak. The shouting, laughing, screaming, crying, singing, haranguing, lecturing, bargaining, chatting city—he wonders if he will ever get used to it again. It used to invigorate him, all this bluster and boisterousness. He used to call strangers to sing with him; he used to go to public places and begin talking with anyone, just to try and find out how he could make their lives a little brighter. The work had helped to keep his mind off Kozzy, and when he aided others through light it helped soothe the sting of the memory of the cruel Mercy.

            Of course, in those brief years he had thought Kozzy had merely gone away to a different country, and even in the moments of his deepest sorrow he had thought he would return essentially unchanged. And at least then he had not been along in wanting Kozzy to come back. It was easier to slip into hope in those years than it became later.

            Though his thoughts are melancholy, Sandy is pleased to find himself capable of getting lost in them as he makes his way down the street. He must be falling back into the pattern of the city faster than he thinks. He smiles a little to himself, and for whatever reason, this catches the eyes of some of the passers-by, and they begin to look past his out-of-date clothing and into his eyes, noticing their bright gold shine.

            “The light adept,” he hears them whispering. “What was his name again?” “Sandren, Master Sandren.” “What’s he doing out here?” “Do you think we can talk to him?” “Mama, I’m happy all of the sudden.”

            _That little girl has never lived in a city with free magic_ , he thinks, and he begins to look many of the people around him in the eye, beckoning them closer to him. He stands near a slender young tree planted between the footpath and the street. The small gathering becomes larger as more people stop out of curiosity.

            “What’s he going to do?” “I can’t see him.”

            “Friends,” Sandy says softly, and the quickness with which silence falls surprises him. “I don’t know exactly what I should say to you. I have been away for a long time, giving you dreams but nothing else.”

            “But such wonderful dreams!” A voice calls out.

            “We look forward to the night!” Cries another.

            “Thank you,” Sandy says. “But I am your Light Adept. I should be with you in the day as well as the night.” He looks out at the people of the city, everyone straining to find a position where they can simply look at him. On all their faces he sees their hunger for magic, for that intangible that gave the city life when he was a child but is now, ominously, gone. _This is not right_ , he thinks. _Even without adepts this land should have its own magic. How else could adepts have arisen in the first place?_ He cannot solve that massive puzzle here, but he can at least ease the strain on these people around him.

            “You know I can capture light and make it into drink,” he says. “Does anyone have a glass vessel they would let me use?” Even ordinary glass will hold light for a short while, and what he gathers will be distributed quickly.

“Here, I have something.” A tall young woman with dark brown hair pushes her way through the crowd, holding what looks to be an empty vase. “Will this do?”

            There’s something oddly familiar about her, but Sandy pushes that distraction from his mind. “Yes, it will do very well.” He smiles at her as he takes the vase.

            He closes his eyes, takes a slow, deep breath, and whispers a small enchantment into the glass that will allow it to hold light this day, and begins the process of gathering light, the movements of his hand as familiar as breathing. So familiar, it is, that even in this situation, surrounded by a crowd and far away from his home, he is able to gather the pure noon sunshine with ease. Soon, the vase is full of brilliant, warm, golden light—the same in the city as on the island. When he looks up, though, he is troubled to see that some of the crowd—not the children though, thank goodness—are hiding their faces from the gathered sunshine.

            “You there,” he says to a man near the front of the crowd, “why are you looking away?”

            “It’s too good,” he says. “I shouldn’t—I don’t deserve—it will burn me, I know it.”

            “Light,” Sandy says, knowing that this is true so long as he is the adept saying it, “Will never harm you. I do not know who has told you otherwise. But you all deserve light.” He reaches out and gently turns the man’s head so he must look at Sandy and the light. “What is your name?”

            “Marion,” the man answers.

            “Marion,” Sandy repeats. “You will drink first. Don’t be afraid. _Don’t be afraid_.”

            Though Marion cannot understand the last few words Sandy speaks, he immediately becomes calmer, and as Sandy hands him the vase, he is able to take it in steady hands and take a small sip of the light within. After drinking, he closes his eyes and sighs, a glad smile forming on his face. “Thank you,” he says, “I feel—I don’t know how to describe how I feel. Young, but I know I did not feel this way when I was young.”

            “You feel as you have a right to feel,” Sandy says, taking back the vase. “This is clarity, and well-being, and peace, and you all have a right to it. And not only in dreams. I am sorry I could not have given you this before.”

            “Even to taste light once in a lifetime is more than I could have hoped for,” Marion says, bowing to Sandy. “May I go and tell my family you are here?”

            “Of course.” Why did Marion think he could tell him yes or no? He was simply a light adept, nothing more— _and you have been for many ageless years. Maybe you are more now._ That thought is for another time, however. Now he must attend to the crowd. They come up to him shyly, one by one, all taking their sip of light from the vase. There are hundreds of them, and he has to refill the vase three times before the crowd even begins to thin, and he is starting to wonder if he will have time to get back to his house and get ready for North’s party, and even if he should—surely the magic-thirsting populace is more important? It was amazing how changed they were with just a little sunlight. It was as if they had all been merely shades before drinking, and afterwards they had become fully alive. This was not right. The light should have been good for them, but to have an effect this dramatic, what deprivations must they have suffered before!

            Finally, though, there seems to be only one person left waiting for her share of light: the young woman who had provided the vase in the first place. She drains it, laughing a little afterwards, in what Sandy recognizes as the rush of pure joy that accompanies every taste of light, and midday sunshine most of all. “Thank you,” she says, before beckoning him over to a flower shop across the sidewalk from where he had been distributing the light. “Come inside. I couldn’t say for sure that you were getting tired out there, but I know you usually stay on that island. I thought you might not want to be swamped all day.”

            “You’re very kind.” Sandy says, gazing around at the profusion of flowers filling numerous stands along the walls and many buckets in rows on the floor. “I wish I could have done that all day, though. I had thought that the dreams were getting through to the city, but it almost seems as though they haven’t.”

            “They have,” the girl says, stepping back behind the counter. “Sometimes they’re the only things that seem real in this city. Of course, it’s not like I’ve known anything else. Do you mind if I begin work again while we talk? Unless of course you need to leave. I’m sorry, I just—you seem so—I don’t know. I want to be around you.”

            “I can stay for a little while. Go right ahead and work.”

            “Thanks.” She begins to arrange flowers in a different vase from the one that held the light. “You know, no matter what that first man said, and what you said to him, I was worried that I would be the one of all the crowd burned by the light.”

            “Really, that is impossible—what may I call you?”

            “Seraphina.”

            “Seraphina. Like I said, that couldn’t have happened. The only ones who can’t drink light are shadow adepts, and, as I understand it, there are none of those individuals in this city.”

            “Not anymore, that’s true,” she says. “I read in the paper that there was one here for a while, but then he stole some important books and they were going to arrest him, but when they went to the place he was staying he wasn’t there. You probably know that already, though. The king mentions quite a bit that you write letters to each other often.”

            “Hmm.” Sandy looks away, inspecting some chrysanthemums. “Well, the king does write to me fairly frequently.”

            “Did you know there was a shadow adept in the city, then? Why did you not come when he was here? Stop him before he stole the books? I mean—I’m sorry, I just—”

            “The king did not tell me Pitch Black had returned to the city when he wrote his letters,” Sandy says, leaning against the counter. “I learned of the occurrence in a different way. As for why I did not come to the city when he was here, or why I did not prevent the book theft, I can only say that the situation is much too complicated to be fully explained in a newspaper. I hope it will be clear someday soon—that is why I am here now. I am truly sorry to be unclear now. But the problems I have come back to solve have their roots in events that took place long before even your great grandparents were born.”

            “Well, I don’t think I’d be bored listening to you explain,” she says, smiling at him before adjusting two brilliant red flowers in a sea of pink and white so that they are not so precisely symmetrical. “And I’m glad it’s complicated.” She focuses even more on the flower arrangement, looking somewhat embarrassed.

            “Why’s that?” Sandy asks.

            “My—my full name is Seraphina Pitchiner,” she says quietly. She turns to him as she continues. “Not too many people today know the name Pitch had before he became the Nightmare King, but even as a child I knew that it was one of my relations—some number of greats-uncle that figured as the villain in my bedtime stories. I mean, when there’s only one name that’s been burned off the family tree—well, it’s as good as having that name outlined in red ink.” She sighs, and goes to get another vase to start a new arrangement. “And so I’m glad it’s complicated, because that means that there might be more than just an evil blot in my blood. I mean, it’s in the stories that he was chosen as a light apprentice. I don’t want…I don’t want to believe that light made a mistake while choosing him, no matter what he did afterwards.”

            She claps her hand over her mouth, as if she’s just thought her statement could be considered traitorous in some way.

            Sandy makes a soothing gesture. “It’s all right. That’s part of what makes this situation complicated. As a light apprentice I was taught that Light does not make mistakes…” _a glass bead rattling in the corner of a small room_ “and there are many things that perhaps only it knows.”

            “I almost thought about seeking him out,” she admits, gathering some sprigs of broad-leaved greenery. “When he was in the city. As family. But I was afraid. I’m just a flower-seller, after all.”

            “It’s still something to be proud of,” Sandy says. “You certainly seem to have a knack for taking care of the blooms.”

            “Thanks.” She adds a large, blue-violet hydrangea to the center of the arrangement. “I learned a lot from the real—that is, previous—owner of the shop. She was from Verd, and with all the changes—well, she signed the place over to me. She was going to stay on, but it just wasn’t right. So she left, with most of her family. Her son stayed in the city though, that’s how I’ve kept afloat.”

            “Oh, yes?” Sandy says. He wants to hear more about the problems caused by the king’s new policies, but a glance at the lengthening afternoon shadows tell him he should be trying to catch a cab back to Fountain Square soon.

            “Yes. He’s the head undergardener at the palace, and relies on me for a lot of the cuttings and seedlings that need to be put in every season. And then he tells the housekeepers and such that they should buy arrangements from me for grand events. I don’t know why he stays though, they won’t promote him now and he deserves a lot more. I think that he might have even been an Earth adept if his family had had the money.” She smiles, not looking at anything in the shop. “His eyes are certainly green enough.” Laughing, she goes back to working on the arrangement. “I’m sorry, that stuff must all seem so little to someone like you.”

            “What—love? Work? I’m afraid there’s no escape from either for the living. Now, I do apologize, but I must be going.”

            “Oh, that’s all right. If you want to catch a cab, head north from here. That’ll bring you to a wider street and you’ll have better luck.”

            “Thank you.” He spreads his hand over his heart and bows slightly, before it occurs to him that there’s a different method of bidding others respectful farewells and greetings these days. Well, it’s too late now, and in any case he doesn’t remember the new custom.

            A delighted expression blooms on Seraphina’s face. “You’re just like something out of a starstory,” she says. “But I don’t think you should be bowing to me.”

            “Lady flowerseller, trust me. I only bow to those who deserve it. Now, it has been very good to meet you. I’m glad to find someone in the city who has a sympathetic connection to the old days, even if it is only through family stories. May I come see you again?”

            “Of—of course!”

            He smiles at her. “Perhaps I’ll tell you of all the people I didn’t bow to this evening.”

            “Wonderful—well—goodbye!” Once he’s left the shop, she turns to the hydrangea and whispers conspiratorially, “He’s nothing like what I expected. And I’m glad. I wonder what he meant about love, though. They say he lives all alone on that island…well, whatever he meant, I hope he’s having an easier time of it than me and my Bunny.”

 

***

 

            “It suits you,” Pitch says, looking over Sandy, who is now wearing his new bronze suit.

            “You don’t think the jacket is too much?” Sandy spins around, the long skirts of the coat flaring out into nearly a complete circle.

            He smiles, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe of Sandy’s suite. “Of course I do. That’s why I said it suits you.”

            “And to think, just a week ago I was content to greet you in a light-stained robe.”

            “I’d like to think that you were so content because, from a certain perspective, clothes between us are—”

            “Vitally important.” Sandy pulls on a pair of bright white gloves, embroidered in white thread with an abstract pattern. They had only needed to be altered to fit him, thank goodness, rather than made up that day. If they had, North would certainly regret his generosity when he received the tailor and milliner’s bills. Now, it was only probable that he would regret it.

            Gloves on, Sandy walks over to Pitch and takes his bare hand in his covered ones. He holds it lightly, trailing his shorter fingers over Pitch’s very long ones. Pitch holds his breath, not wanting even that to distract him from the faint sensation of the heat of Sandy’s skin emanating through the thin silk of his gloves and into his own.

            “Most familiar and most strange,” Sandy murmurs, his hands stilling. Yet after a few heartbeats pass (oh so much more quickly than usual) Pitch begins to feel a definite burn at the points where Sandy’s hands touch his. For an instant he is not sure whether or not this sensation is merely in his head, for he has been holding his breath and this burn is not what he expected. It is an almost pleasant and certainly ecstatic sensation because it is Sandy causing it. He has just opened his mouth to speak, not sure what he will say (perhaps nothing but “Sandy, Sandy”) when, judging by his expression of anxious surprise, Sandy involuntarily drops Pitch’s hand.

            “ _I’m sorry. I should not…_ ” He shakes his head and presses the knuckles of his hand to his mouth. And though Pitch understands that it is vitally important to know whether Sandy could not or would not finish his statement, he does not ask this of him as he picks up his invitation and hurries downstairs. Instead, he stares at the faintest of reddish marks in the shape of a small pair of hands that stand out like roses in a desert on his death-pale skin. They already seem to fade, and Pitch raises his hand to lightly kiss each almost-burn before it vanishes. _This is mad_ , he thinks as he does so. _This is madder than all the stories of girls on the moors and their awful men. It is a wonder we do not scream_.

 

***

 

            It is only through a concentrated effort of will that Sandy avoids running his fingers through his hair on the way over to North’s. He will look like a guest of honor at a fine party. He will look like someone who was once a hero. He will not look like a hermit who happened to wander in while dressed in someone else’s fine clothes. He sighs, irritated with himself, and the driver of the carriage that was sent over to collect him glances at him impassively.

            He had been doing so well! Hadn’t he? He knew the limitations, and he had followed them, well aware of the dangers, even after the starlight, even on the ship to the city. And tonight? As soon as he had a pair of gloves on he had been unable to resist putting everything in jeopardy! And for what? The non-touch of Pitch’s hand? Sun and Moon, there was still part of him that said it might be worth it. The only comfort was that Light had acted as it was supposed to and forced him to drop Pitch’s hand as soon as the barrier of thin silk between their skins had become ineffective against the magics, inimical to each other, that resided in those skins. He would have to trust Light now, perhaps more so than he ever had before, to prevent him from doing anything even more dangerous. For it was quite clear that conscious thought would not help him. He knew how sorely he, how sorely Light was needed in the city and no doubt the kingdom, and yet a particular set of long limbs dressed all in black could drive that so utterly from his mind that he might as well be as ignorant of the situation as a star fallen from the sky.

            He is distracted from such thoughts when, after a short while, the driver pulls to a stop in front of North’s house, a vast pile on the outskirts of the city, ablaze with yellow light from hundreds of gas lamps. The size of the place immediately tells him that even if he had needed to get his gloves custom made that day, North might not have even noticed that press upon his generosity and would certainly not have felt strained by it. Looking out on the well-lit, well-kept lawns in front of the house, Sandy cannot help but wonder if North will even slightly appear like a man who was once only a highly skilled toymaker.

 

***

 

            Once inside, Sandy is unsurprised to find himself facing a bewildering round of introductions to the currently grand and glittering of the City of the Moon. In the heavy downpour of names and titles, almost none sink into his brain, and the main impression he gets is that there are far more titles to be had in the Lunar kingdom than there used to be. His host, North, of course, is very memorable, but then again he has no title and does not seem afraid of standing out from the crowd, which the others, for all their finery, do.

            Taking Sandy’s initial reticence as a sign of timidity or perhaps unworldliness—Sandy doesn’t know, and chooses not to spend the time worrying about it right now: the assumptions people make based on his silence can be dealt with after he understands the current social situation—North appoints himself as his guide through the drawing rooms where the guests are drinking their aperitifs. Since the guests start to blend together almost at once, Sandy instead directs most of his attention to getting the measure of North.

            Taller by far than anyone else he’s seen in the city so far, North further stands apart from the crowd by wearing a deep crimson suit cut after the fashion of the northern islands, with trousers that sit high on his waist and a belt richly embroidered in reds, browns, and black. Among most of the guests, this is enough to make him look almost barbaric, but for Sandy the real crowning glory of North’s outfit are the polished leather boots he’s tucked his trousers into. Put some spurs on them and he’d cut a reasonable figure of a highwayman, despite his graying beard and hair, both of which he wears much longer than most men of similar age. Under his bushy black eyebrows, his blue eyes are bright and clear, and there’s something about both North’s eyes and his whole manner that seems as yet singular in the city. Sandy’s sure he could figure it out if he just had a moment to think, but there’s certainly no time for that now.

            One of the introductions that takes Sandy away from his character study of North (who is troublingly likeable despite what Sandy has heard about his involvement in enabling the king to enforce his laws against Verdans) is that of the Director of the Great Library.

            Her dress is an iridescent green and the skirt falls in tiers cut to resemble feathers. Despite the full skirt and the close-fitting sleeves of her gown, her movements are quick and precise, and when she steps forward to offer Sandy the light touch of fingertips that is the greeting currently in vogue, it looks as though she barely touches the ground. However, her most notable feature are the pair of green-tinted glasses she wears, apparently out of necessity, for she wears them so that they cover her eyes fully, not balanced on the end of her nose.

            “Director Toothiana, allow me to present Master Sandren. Master Sandren, Director Toothiana,” North says, saying the appropriate words for such a social situation but at the same time sounding as if he is about to laugh, as he has all evening.

            “Pleased to meet you,” Sandy says. “But I’m afraid I must admit that I’m at a disadvantage here. You know who I am, but I don’t know what you are the director of.”

            Toothiana clasps her hands together, looking both proud and embarrassed. “I’m the Director of the Great Library. Master Sandren, I ask you to please forgive us for the recent trouble with the shadow adept—if we had known, we would have never let him in the building. We would have kept the lamps lit all night! We forgot what you taught the city about the shadow-men all those years ago. The library is ordinarily—at all other times—safe and secure. Even the king cannot ask for materials to be removed.”

            “Please, Director. I understand. It is not easy to deal with Shadow Adepts. No matter what has occurred recently, I still think I made the right choice when I sent most of the Luminous Academy’s archives to the Great Library.” And I think I ought to keep in mind that the king has no official power over the collections.

            “Well, that is good,” North interjects. “We should all be so lucky as to stand by our decisions for a few hundred years. Now, Director Toothiana, would you please excuse us? Many more guests are awaiting their introductions and we only have a short time until dinner.”

            Toothiana graciously inclines her head. Before North can herd him towards less interesting people, however, Sandy speaks to her once more. “Director, one of my reasons for visiting the city at this time was to look into the Great Library’s archives, especially those works that concern the light adepts. Perhaps we can talk after dinner regarding how I should go about this?”

            Toothiana nods, her face lighting up. “Oh, yes! Even with the theft of some of the books, I think that you’ll be able to find as much information as you can bear about the Light Adepts in the library. I’d be glad to help by—”

            Sandy doesn’t get to hear the end of her sentence as he’s pulled into a circle of young men and women who look like rather sickly specimens in contract to North, and Sandy’s tempted to be rude and ask them if they know who’s producing all their army sugar. He restrains himself, though, and after a few more minutes the whole glittering host moves into the dining room.

 

***

 

            Sandy has no objections to being seated at North’s right hand, but to the man sitting across from him, on North’s left, he forms an instant and irrational dislike. He tells himself it’s just his aversion to the man’s titles—he’s both something like a marquis and something like Secretary of Internal Affairs—but he knows that even if this man were an utter nobody he would still feel his skin crawling at his perfect manners. What was it? The man was inoffensive-looking, middle-aged and blandly ex-handsome, wearing a gray suit cut like many other suits. In fact, aside from his generic appearance, Sandy almost feels as though he should approve of him. For all his outward dullness, his brown eyes are actually very lively, and he seems, of all the partygoers, most awake and alive. That is, save for Toothiana and his host. What could they all have in common? Sandy is pulled from this line of thought and back into the conversation when he hears the man mention farming equipment to North.

            “I simply used my talents as the king requested,” North says in response to the Secretary’s comment.

            “Oh, but surely you can’t be so modest. I mean, this house, this party—you enjoy what you’ve earned from the royal commissions. Far better than what you had before, isn’t it?”

            “I would not want to seem ungrateful to the king’s generosity. At heart, you know, I am still a simple toymaker.”

            “Simple—” the Secretary waves his hand. “You had, have, great talent. That’s why the king chose you in the first place. So that your great talent could be used for the good of the kingdom. You’re a hero, North.”

            “If that is what the king chooses to call me, I suppose I must accept the title.” Sandy notices that the joviality that was present in his voice before has faded almost to nothing.

            “A hero!” the Secretary repeats, now turning to look at Sandy. “And I’ll call you that even though we have another hero with us!”

            Sandy’s not sure how to reply to that, so he merely inclines his head slightly.

            “The one man who made the City of the Moon a city of pure light. Now, North, here’s a man who knows all about using his talents for the good of the city. You’ve brought us dreams single-handedly for, what, over a century?”

            “Three hundred and eighty-two years,” Sandy says quietly, and he thinks he sees the hint of a smirk on North’s lips.

            “That _is_ over a century.” The Secretary piles his plate high with fruit from several silver bowls on the table. “But you see North? That’s true devotion to the king. Master Sandren sends the ungrateful rabble of the city dreams because the king especially requests it, at the cost of great personal effort to himself.”

            Sandy’s can’t help the look of surprise and disbelief that crosses his face at this statement, but thankfully the Secretary isn’t looking, absorbed as he is in choosing which of the fresh golden cherries he should eat first.

            “As a former member of the rabble, I would like to thank you for your devotion,” North says to Sandy, the amusement on his face showing clearly that he’s seen Sandy’s discomforted expression. “And I would also like to say that I hope my devotion to the king shall be seen to equal yours one day.”

            “I’m sure it will, North, I’m sure it will,” the Secretary says, talking around the fruit in his mouth. He closes his lips and bites down, shutting his eyes as he savors the taste. “Such dedication to duty is as sweet to the king as these cherries.”

            “Let us hope that in such dedication there are no pits on which he could break his teeth,” Sandy says, concern dripping from his voice.

 

***

 

Later on, after dinner, North walks up to Sandy as he stands on a small balcony off the ballroom, endeavoring to catch some fresh air.

“This house was a gift, you know,” he says, looking out over the grounds. “I have been given many gifts lately. Strange to say, though, I think the giver does not know much about the art of gift-giving, at least not as I understood it while I was a toymaker.”

“You could not refuse these gifts.” Sandy looks up at North, trying to gauge his expression in the dim light.

“It is difficult—and there is never a good reason—to refuse a reward for doing what you do best.” He puts his hands on his hips and steps further away from the light of the ballroom. “It is difficult to refuse to do what you do well. It is difficult to refuse a position that makes it easier for you to do what you do well.”

            Sandy considers all the domestic details of his life that have been dealt with via the palace for centuries. Even on the island, the regular appearance of the supply boat was governed by an old agreement with a Lunar King. He thinks of how, even when the king’s letters angered him the most, he never considered stopping sending dreams.

            “And at the last winding of the key,” North says, after a pause, “I was needed.”

            “You would rather not have been needed.”

            North nods, ever so slightly. “I did not get a chance to think about what my machines would do. Now…there is no going back. They do not make us equivalent to the Verdans, but they do not eat, and they do not make demands.”  He sighs. “I am part of something now I know I will not see the end of. I am old, but I fear I will die in an unrecognizable world, wrought by my hands. Do you know, I have created a carriage that moves without horses? Do you know how many people in this one city work in caring for horses?” He turns to look at Sandy. “The king is very disappointed that I have not made more. He does not believe me when I say it would be too expensive. He is right. I am lying. I already know how I could do it, make it cheap. The design for the factory is in my head. I cannot help but solve the puzzles put before me. I know I have no magic, Master Sandren, but I feel sometimes as though I am an adept of some type never seen before, unable to be trained, unable to be guided in some moral path.”

            “Don’t be so sure that you are not.” Sandy walks forward so he’s standing next to North. “Magic—especially in this land—has proven itself to be very mysterious.”

            “Magic.” North shakes his head. “If the king can see when I am lying, I am at least compensated by knowing when he is lying.” He pauses. “Shall I continue?”

            “I do have a pit at my center,” Sandy replies.

            “The king talks a great deal about wanting to restore the Light Adepts. He keeps the Frost boy close to him and praises his power. But I do not think he actually wishes for magic to be restored. I think he likes that there are only you, and Jack. It fits with his new laws better than the reasons he says.”

            “The Shadow Adept’s visit must have been greatly discomfiting to him, then.” Sandy smiles slightly.

            “Oh yes,” says North. “But do not tell me you are going to start sympathizing with the Nightmare King because of that.”

            “When I sympathize with the Nightmare King, I will have better reasons, I promise you.” For a time they stand in silence. “Was there anything else you wanted to say?”

            “You did not like the Secretary tonight. I know how you feel. You wonder how such an objectively dull and unctuous man can have such presence. Well, I will tell you what I think. He is involved in the management of the Frost boy. The magic boy. I tell you, it is not his ability to control the weather that has him hold such sway. No, it is the magic in his very person. It flows from him, and everyone who has been in his presence feels it. The people of the city may not know it, but there is a pall over us that magic lifts. I have my best ideas after visiting the king when Jack is near him. Magic makes us alive, and usually we only get a taste of it while we are sleeping now.”

            “I’m sorry,” Sandy says, but North waves his statement away.

            “Magic should not rely on one person. The influence of the Frost boy proves it. The king has made us in his inner circle all addicts. No. Not addicts. Magic is not like army sugar. But imagine having to debase yourself to drink clean water…I’m afraid this is not a very good welcome to the city, Master Sandren!”

            “Call me Sandy, please. And it may not be a good welcome, but it is a truthful welcome.” He laughs softly. “North, I gave hundreds of people in the city pure sunlight to drink today, because I could tell how much they needed it. The awfulness of the lack of magic is going to become very clear to many, many people, very soon. It probably already has. And I still would have done it even if I had known what you told me just now.”

            North grins at him. “I hope you are ready for some interesting days, then, my friend.”

            “I think interesting days are just what are needed,” Sandy answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point during the Dimming, a group in the city began trying to pass off white grape juice as light.
> 
> (Oh please someone get this terrible joke because otherwise this chapter is full of a bunch of allusions that only I feel somewhat uncomfortable with.)
> 
> Also, while Sandy is ~512 by the calendar, it's been 382 years since the death of the last other light adept.


	6. The Moonpool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch gets ready for his and Sandy's work in the library tomorrow. They remember the night they swam in the moonpool. Metaphorical statements turn out to be literal and horny twentysomethings play around with forces they don't really understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the toast they find written on the wall of the moonpool chamber because I wanted something more thematically appropriate and I shouldn't steal from Neil.
> 
> Luneil=June. At some point I realized that the months should have different names because this world has a different history. 
> 
> I apologize for inconsistent capitalization of light, shadow, and adept. Someday I'll get my shit together, I promise.

While Sandy is out at North’s party, Pitch begins to prepare himself for the shadow magic he’ll be performing as they begin their work in the library. Only Sandy can be seen, but he’s certainly not going to sit and wait at home while they search for answers.

            He sits at a desk in his suite and unlatches his case of shadows. Unlike Sandy, who keeps a whole cellar of light, this ebony box contains all his collected darkness. It is all he needs, for, again, unlike Sandy, no one looks to him to use his skills. No one calls on him to employ his talents.

He is, overall, pleased with this situation. After all, when he was a new shadow adept, he had been asked to use his powers for others. Unfortunately, one of the only things anyone knew about the shadow adepts at that time was that shadow adepts were able to cause harm with their magic. And since a light adept could be asked to perform any other service, shadow adepts were usually only sought out for a very limited set of purposes. If they were sought for anything else, it was by a very limited set of people: those who, for whatever reason, saw themselves beyond the help of Light. Pitch had not minded dealing with them. After all, he had been one of their number once.

            He draws out various small metal bottles, all made of an alloy unique to their purpose. Only Pitch and one remote smithy in the Empire of the Five Beacons know the formula now. Centuries ago, the sharing of such knowledge would have been unthinkable, but he does not have his own island on which to build his own workshop.

            Each bottle is labeled with ink that will not fade until he asks it to, the contents described in a language two know but only one will speak. He looks over these labels, searching for the shadows that will respond best to what he wants to do. He wants to accompany a light adept, and he wants his presence to incite no inquiry.

            Pitch finds his solution in “ _shadows cast by lone trees on clear days_ ”. As far as he could tell, most people thought little about the fact that on the brightest days, the darkest shadows are cast. Even among shadow adepts it had gone mostly unremarked upon. Then again, perhaps that was because gathering the shadows cast by any large object on a bright day was almost of necessity an awkward and painful process. And while it was true that he had gotten much better at gathering shadows and using protective clothing over the years, Pitch was pleased to have found a specific purpose for these particular shadows—some repayment against the difficulty of obtaining them.

            They are perfect for his goals because of their obscurity in common thought as well as their daytime origins. The shadows that appeared alongside light—strong light—without ever causing anyone to glance twice. As long as he stays near Sandy, he will be able to be practically, if not literally, invisible. And of course he will stay near Sandy.

            He warms the dark gray wax of the seal with his hands until it softens enough for him to remove the stopper. Once it is taken out, he sets it on the desk, inside facing up, and with little ceremony takes a small sip of the shadows inside, all he needs to enable him to add a particular cast to the use of his powers for a few days.

            These shadows are cold, as they always are, but what surprises him upon drinking is that they have the exact same texture as the starlight he drank not too long ago: lighter and thinner than water. He had forgotten, after so long abstaining from light. The similarity to starlight ends there, however. These shadows taste slightly of cardamom and the smell of damp leaves, while underneath those notes lies the strange and, always surprising to the uninitiated, sweetness of all shadows. Oh, the sweetness of shadows! Before tasting his first moonless night, he had been not been told anything of what he was about to experience. He had thought the shadows would be bitter, but he had been prepared to face anything.

            If only he had someone to share this sweetness with—he wishes he could share it with Sandy, as they both share, if not the working, at least the memories of living in light, but of course he cannot share the subtle ways of darkness with the last light adept. Either the shadows would taint him, or his own nature, now inseparable from light, would obliterate the delicate interchange of secrets and knowledge, the contrast between that which is hidden out of shame and that which is concealed because it is sacred, the strange presence of truth in lies, and the rare, occasional appearance, like a ruby in a sty, of kindness in violence.

            That last would be the hardest for Sandy to accept, Pitch knew, and that was why, no matter what, he had remained a light adept. But now, five hundred years on, Pitch, with the sweetness of shadows lingering on his tongue, the sweetness of shadows that flow like starlight down his throat, wonders if that ruby might not have been present even in the Mercy that drove him to the shadows. For are not he and Sandy the only light and shadow adepts that would deign to speak to each other as equals in all the history he has read? And do they not find their skills complementary? Perhaps in all their immortal years Light and Shadow have been trying to teach him and Sandy something that the other adepts did not know and could never know—something that he and Sandy have also been slow to understand, but something that they are uniquely suited to comprehend.

            “Or perhaps I am grasping at straws, looking for ways to justify my attempted seduction of light,” Pitch says aloud.

 

            Sandy returns to the house on Fountain Square well into the night, but, unsurprisingly, Pitch is still awake and waiting for him.

            “Good evening—or morning, whichever it is,” Sandy says, yawning as he eases himself onto a couch. “I’ve never understood timekeeping that starts the morning hours in the dark.”

            “How did it go?” Pitch asks, sitting in a chair opposite him.

            “Well, I have plenty to tell you. Most of it is bad news, and I may have made our situation more complicated by what I thought was an act of kindness this afternoon, but honestly I can’t find it in myself to care. The thing is, Pitch, the king is making a lot of assumptions about magic, and even though what he’s doing is harmful, the fact remains that he’s trying to deal with forces he doesn’t understand. My power is more than pleasant dreams, and even pleasant dreams are more powerful than he thinks.”

            “So you plan to crumble his regime singlehandedly as soon as we find out more about the history of the light adepts?”

            Sandy laughs. “Maybe. I did bring some of the lightning with me, after all.” He shakes his head. “For now though, I’m more concerned with finishing your research. I think as soon as we understand ourselves, the situation with the king will become clearer.”

            “We go to the Great Library tomorrow, then? I drank some shadows that will allow me to remain unnoticed as long as I am close to you.”

            “But not too close.”

            “Sandy, believe me, if ever we find a solution to the problems that arise when we are too close, the entire city will notice.”

            Sandy raises his eyebrows, but in the faint light of the one lamp in the room, Pitch can see a slight blush coloring his cheeks. “You are impossible,” he says, but doesn’t reprimand him.

            “We’re both impossible,” Pitch counters. “Should we go outside and take a drink from the Great Moon Fountain for luck?”

            “If it’s cold, we should probably swim in it.” Sandy gets up and heads to the door, Pitch following. “Though, all things considered, that might not help.”

 

***

 

            It had been three and a half years since Kozzy had faced the Mercy and ran away from the Light Academy on a stolen horse when the nightmares began in the City of the Moon.

            Sandy was still working as the king’s personal dreambringer, still living in the palace and setting up a delicate, palm-sized dreamglass filled with carefully selected and measured lights by the king’s head every evening before he went to sleep. Many people thought of him as a peculiar type of entertainer—a magic-worker, yes, but harmless enough. Mostly, this opinion pleased Sandy. It led the king to become comfortable with him, and direct him less regarding the kinds of dreams he was told to brew. And when someone remarked that executions and other public punishments were at an all-time low, Sandy did not presume to claim any part in this trend.

            It was his position in the palace and as a dreambringer that prevented him from finding out about the plague of nightmares until it had been ongoing for several nights already. He had been stopping by a market on the way to the house on Fountain Square where some rare lights only available from the Academy’s cellars had been sent for his use when he noticed that a great many of the people around him looked haggard and wan, as if they had not been sleeping well.

            “Is there some sort of illness going around the city?” Sandy asked the young woman selling jam. “The faces I see today are not cheery ones.”

            “Begging your pardon, Master Sandren,” she said, “but no one I know has had a good dream for three nights running. They go from strange to bad—I woke up screaming, myself, last night. Can light go bad, like a batch of cider? I’ve heard of the adepts pouring light into a big basin and that’s what brings our good dreams. Seems like it’s gone sour to me.”

            “Thank you for telling me about this,” Sandy said, “But if light has started to go sour it’s the first I’ve heard of it happening. I’m just on my way to Fountain Square now, though, and if the other adepts don’t know of this, they will soon.” He smiled reassuringly at her. “Don’t worry too much. I’m sure we’ll solve the problem in no time. After all, this is what we’re best at.”

           

            The atmosphere at Fountain Square, though, was less than confident. The other adepts in the city were aware of the problem, but messages sent via scrying dish confirmed aspects of the nightmare plague that only made it more mysterious. The lights used at the Academy to fill the Great Dream Glass had been tasted and tested, and nothing had been found amiss. Furthermore, when asked, the light adepts of other towns throughout the Lunar Kingdom reported no nightmares troubling those within their range of influence. The plague of nightmares, whatever its source, seemed to be limited to the City of the Moon.

            “Could it be…shadow adepts?” Sandy asked, breaking one particularly long silence. Shadow adepts were a persistent feature of the city’s underbelly, their dark magics used by the depraved and desperate for commensurately depraved and desperate purposes, and no matter what measures the light adepts took, their presence seemed impossible to eradicate.

            “Doubtful.” Master Dinur, an adept whose main work was prescribing doses of light to those whose problems could not be solved by more ordinary medicine, frowned and drummed his fingers on the table. “The crafting of dreams—whether good or bad—is a practice solely understood by light adepts, and this skill is the culmination of twelve years of apprenticeship. To make nightmares on such a scale is something only a light adept could do, and simultaneously something a light adept could never do, given that nightmares are harmful.

            “Personally, I am inclined to think that it is some natural process gone awry. I have heard tales in Windburne of foul air erupting from underneath lakes, killing entire valleys’ worth of people. If the Air Adepts had known of the potential problem, lives could have been saved, but the danger was undetectable. Thankfully for us, nightmares have not yet proved lethal.”

            “We will begin a house to house survey,” Master Rora, the current Counselor of Light, said. “Asking the people to describe their nightmares and rank them in terms of severity and duration. Hopefully, this will allow us to find the epicenter of whatever is causing them.”

            Sandy thought that would be a waste of time, but he kept silent, for Dinur’s statement on dreamcrafting had impressed upon him that he had much more pressing problems and no time to spend debating measures whose main value would be to make the light adepts seem busy to the people of the city.

            It was like a riddle: When is a light adept not a light adept?

            Though he had never been good at riddles otherwise, this one had an obvious solution, which both chilled him and filled him with giddy hope. The only non-light adept who could craft dreams on such a scale was Kozzy, and even if he was making nightmares now, those nightmares meant that he was in the city—meant that Sandy could see him!

            “You are a fool,” Sandy muttered to himself as he made his way back to the palace with his armful of lights, unable to stop himself from grinning. “Would you forgive him murder?” _Probably_ , his mind answered. But surely the nightmares were part of a misunderstanding. What could Kozzy or anyone gain from them? As soon as he found Kozzy, as soon as he talked to him, everything would be cleared up. _Maybe we are being affected by_ his _nightmares. Maybe when I see him again I will be able to do something to take those nightmares away._ He had no idea where to find Kozzy, of course, but that was what scrying was for.

            It turned out that no scrying was necessary, for when Sandy returned to the palace he found a brief note in his rooms. It read:

 

            Sandy,

                        I shouldn’t be in the city, but I had to tell you something. And I must show you something as well. ~~I also hope that for the last time~~

                        Meet me at the well house at Broadhand Corner at midnight. Please. If you do not do this, the next time I see you I will be

                        No. I cannot tell you this in a letter.

 

                        Kozzy

 

            No one around Sandy’s room had seen such a note delivered, and that, along with the contents, made him more worried than he had been, and he was impatient waiting for midnight, leaving bottles of sunlight half-filled, pacing up and down corridors after the early winter sunset, and giving odd, cryptic answers to those who spoke to him.

 

            He arrived at Broadhand Corner at half past eleven. No one was in the well house, and he walked around the well impatiently, clockwise and counterclockwise, willing time to pass. Why had Kozzy wanted to meet him here? There were at least a dozen other places like this all over the city. Little stone buildings with small, high windows, sheltering wells holding pure, clean water from springs somewhere beneath the city. Sandy supposed that the well houses’ water and that of the Great Moon Fountain had the same source, since they seemed to taste exactly the same. But this well house was not a symbolic place. Why here? Could it have something to do with the water? This thought seemed right, but Sandy did not attend to it. He cared for nothing but Kozzy’s arrival. In honor of reuniting, he had brought a small bottle of full moonlight with him, now held in his coat’s deep pockets. Technically, it was meant for the king’s dreams, but Sandy was sure that the king would survive without it.

            Sandy peered out the door, looking out at the Spring Clock Tower that set the time for the east side of the city, its face softly illuminated by a mixture of sunlight and moonlight that was poured into a very thin glass container behind the hands and numbers. Seven minutes had passed since he had entered the well house. He groaned aloud. Why couldn’t Kozzy be early? Surely he didn’t think that Sandy would be late. He let the door fall shut and leaned against a wall. He was glaring at the room for its refusal to yield Kozzy from the shadows, when, astonishingly, it did. One minute, the well house had been empty, save for Sandy, and in the next minute someone was stepping from one of the shadowed corners.

            That someone was heavily cloaked, wearing a scarf around the lower half of their face and gloves on their hands. “Who are you? What are you?” Sandy asked, backing away from the figure.

            “It’s just me, Sandy, I swear. I’m sorry—I—please don’t be frightened.”

            His voice was unmistakable. “Kozzy,” Sandy breathed, a smile growing on his face. He ran forward to embrace him, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Kozzy bent down to return the embrace.

            “I’ve missed you. So much.” Kozzy brought one of his hands up to tangle in Sandy’s hair. “I’m risking everything to be here with you tonight. But I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again.”

            “Kozzy, what are you talking about? Why aren’t you back for good? Why all this secrecy? Why the gloves, the cloak, the scarf? Tell me you’re being silly. What could possibly separate us? Whatever you think is the problem, I can solve it. Does it have to do with—the nightmares? I’m sure I can help with that!”

            “Nightmares?” Kozzy sounded puzzled. “I don’t know about any nightmares. I’ve been trying to send you dreams to let you know I was here, but it didn’t seem to be working. That’s why I left you the note. But maybe something was going wrong with what I was trying to do…I’ve been working from memory, on my own, I don’t have a real dreamglass and…I can’t put it off any longer, Sandy. I have to show you.” He pulled away from Sandy reluctantly, and, with the air of someone about to dive into an icy lake, threw back his hood, and unwound the scarf from his face.

            Sandy gasped. “No!” He fumbled in his pocket for the moonlight. Surely what he was seeing was a trick of the dim light in the well house.

            “Careful!” Kozzy said sharply as Sandy lifted the shining bottle so he could see him more fully. With that word, Sandy nearly dropped the bottle on the ground, and that, and the one word Kozzy had spoken, convinced him in an instant that Kozzy had become what he appeared to be—or mostly appeared to be. In the moonlight, it was clear that Kozzy’s skin was no longer golden, his hair no longer blond. Instead, his face and hands were pale and grayish, almost looking like a corpse’s, and his hair was as black as the inside of a cave. His face seemed thinner, and the only thing about it that looked familiar at all was the gold that still shone in a ring around his pupils.

            “How—but you couldn’t! You were chosen for light! This is—impossible. You’re not—you’re not a shadow worker, Kozzy. I know you.” Sandy could hear his voice breaking, but he couldn’t stop it.

            “Light didn’t want me, Sandy. I looked for the shadow adepts and I found them. I passed their test that determined whether I could wield shadow. I am a shadow worker. But it’s not an evil thing, Sandy.”

            Sandy wasn’t sure if he wanted to argue or cry. He decided to do neither. “If you say it, I believe you.”

            Kozzy smiled in relief. “You are true light. I’m glad…that you’re trying to accept me, because we don’t have much time, and I don’t want to waste it in arguing.”

            “Kozzy. I have too many questions for one night. But—do you understand how hard this is for me? How—Kozzy. Kozzy. Do you remember the things we said to each other the night I became a master? True things. Things that even the darkness cannot undo. Kozzy. I thought your voice would be the one always raised in song with mine, and now? Now it would burn your lips to sing those songs.”

            “Darkness is not in the habit of undoing things, any more than Light is,” Kozzy murmured. “I remember. I remember everything. I have been cutting my heart out with every sweet drop of darkness, with every sharp Erebusian word I learn. I know what my being a shadow adept means when considered with those Shining words. But I am of the shadows, Sandy. I have…a gift for darkness. Just as you have a gift for light. You shine brighter than the rest. You always have.”

            “Then why did the light choose you?!” Sandy raised his voice, not caring who might be around to hear what he said at this time of night.

            “I don’t know.” Kozzy’s voice was flat. “But it seemed to regret its choice three years ago.” He shook his head and warmth returned to his voice when he spoke again. “Sandy. I wanted to show you more than what I have made of myself. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. As a shadow worker one becomes attuned to secrets and hidden things. There’s a big secret under the city, and these well houses, and the Great Moon Fountain, are part of it. It’s something that’s been hidden for a very long time—maybe since the city’s founding—and we could be the first ones to see it in two thousand years.”

            He was still Kozzy, still exactly Kozzy, and the lack of change made Sandy feel as though the ground under his feet, and perhaps under the feet of every Light Adept, had turned to treacherous quicksand. But there was no time to speak of that now. “You mean you don’t know what it is?”

            “Well, no….It’s light that reveals, and even if I still remember how to ask for revelation, I haven’t had any light in years. But I know there’s something here, and you can uncover it.”

            Sandy laughed a little. “I hope it’s a good secret.” He raised the bottle of moonlight once more to look about the room, peering intently at the walls, the ceiling, the well itself, the floor. About to do a closer examination, he remembered that no one was around to watch them and he spoke one of Shining’s difficult-to-translate words, that meant something like ‘show me’ and ‘you are seen’ and ‘revelation’ and ‘the full moon’. The room shimmered and Kozzy shielded his eyes, while Sandy inhaled sharply. “Sun and Moon!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I overdid it a little. Did you know someone was murdered here not too long ago? Their blood is still in the mortar between the tiles. I’ll have to look into that tomorrow. But I think I found your secret, Kozzy. Or at least the way into it.”

            A small cloud of dust hovered over one corner of the well house, and as the two went over to it they found that the dust seemed to have come from the shifting of an ancient trapdoor set almost seamlessly into the floor. Sandy’s word had disturbed it, and now the outlines were clearly visible.

            “There’s no handle,” Kozzy observed.

            “Guess they didn’t want just anyone getting in.” Sandy gestured and pulled out the three foot square slab of stone, which turned out to be a foot thick. “And they were very serious about that.”

            “I see stairs!”

            “Let me go first,” Sandy insisted. “I’m shorter, and I have a light. We’ll be able to see everything at the same time that way.”

            Kozzy bowed in agreement, and without any further discussion, Sandy set his foot upon the top stair and began to descend, holding the bottle of moonlight before him.

            The air was surprisingly fresh, though much warmer than the winter air outside, and Sandy thought he could even feel the slightest of breezes on his face as he walked down the stone stairs, Kozzy close behind. Clearly, that sealed trapdoor had not been the only way in or out. Maybe it had never been meant to be used at all. Despite the obvious age of the steps, they were not rounded at their edges or centers.

            The stairs took them down to perhaps thirty feet below street level, at which point they leveled off into a passage which turned sharply to the left after just a few feet. After taking this turn, the passage continued for about ten feet before opening into a large, round, low-ceilinged chamber that held nothing save for a perfectly circular pool of water, approximately forty feet in diameter.

There was a five- to six-foot wide mosaic around it that served as a border and means of walking around the pool, and even in the illumination provided by one small bottle of moonlight, Sandy could see that the tiles depicted figures, not just an abstract pattern.

            “This is it. This is the secret.” Kozzy said, awe in his voice.

            “But what is it?” Sandy murmured. Something about the way his moonlight hit the room seemed slightly off, and, on a whim, he put it back in his pocket. Everything went dark to him for a moment, but soon enough his eyes adjusted and what he thought he had seen proved to be correct. The crystal-clear water in the pool was glowing, ever so faintly. He stepped forward for a closer look, Kozzy at his side. In the pool, under the water, he could see several small, round openings where the side met the bottom. At the center there was a very small opening, which corresponded to a slight ripple in the surface of the water.

            “This is a spring,” Sandy said, just as Kozzy said, “This is where the wells get their water.”

            “Yes…” Sandy breathed. “I can feel the magic in it, that takes the water to the surface. It’s ancient. But there’s something else. I’d almost think—I don’t know. Can you feel it, Kozzy? It’s so strong. I—the water raising spells almost fade into it.”

            “It’s like light,” Kozzy said. “But even stronger.”

            “Does it hurt you?” Sandy said, his voice sounding faint. Without noticing it, he was edging closer to the pool. “How does it become ordinary water in the wells? More magic? Light of First Morning…I feel dizzy just looking at it…”

            Kozzy reached out and grasped Sandy’s shoulder firmly. “Try to look away then.” Sandy looked up at Kozzy. In the strange light of the water, they didn’t look so drastically different. “No, it doesn’t hurt me. It’s like light, but it’s not light at all. Yet it seems familiar.”

            Sandy looked about the circular chamber and noticed, directly across from them, a doorway much like the one they had gone through to get to the pool. “This isn’t the only pool,” he said with utter conviction. “There’s a network of these under the city. They feed the well house wells. And,” he concluded, “the Great Moon Fountain.”

            “How can you be sure?” Kozzy asked as he began to examine the mosaics beneath their feet.

            “How could I not be sure, in this place?” Sandy replied, though he wasn’t quite sure what he meant. He still felt slightly faint, and decided to sit down on the tiles.

            Kozzy stepped away slightly to get a better sense of the design. It was a series of human figures, featureless and with no markers of gender. Some were made out of gold-colored tiles, and others were made from tile that would look black to ordinary eyes in the dim light, but shone a deep, rich, blue-violet to Kozzy’s shadow-sensitive vision. Behind the figures, he thought he could see traditional representations of the seasons, as well as the phases of the moon. The human figures looked like they were dancing though them. He’d have to walk around the whole pool to see if he was right, but for now he was content to stay near Sandy and let his guess stand.

            He turned back to Sandy. “How are you feeling? What are you doing?”

            Sandy looked down. Without realizing what he was doing, he had taken off his shoes and socks. He shook his head to try and clear it. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

            “Hm.” Kozzy sat down next to him and pulled off his boots and socks as well. “You’re probably right.”

            “The city drinks this water every day,” Sandy said dreamily. “I don’t think it would be the City of the Moon without it.”

            “But the well houses don’t feel like this.”

            “The Great Moon Fountain does, though. A little.”

            “I used to think the water would glow in the dark, as a child,” Kozzy admitted.

            “You were perceptive.” Sandy smiled sadly. “You had the revelatory skill of light even then.” They sat in silence for a while. “I wish I knew what this meant. I can tell even my skills couldn’t force a revelation of that, here. It’s a mystery. Probably known to some as a mystery. Isn’t that an odd idea? A mystery known as a mystery. That’s not Light or Shadow.” Sandy sighed. “Almost like you, now.”

            “For a little while longer, yes.”

            “I brought the moonlight for a toast to our reunion,” Sandy said. “I still want to share it, if it will not hurt you.”

            “I don’t think it will,” said Kozzy. “At least not until I become a full shadow adept. After, all, you were able to embrace me earlier, and I don’t think—that is, I’m fairly sure…that will be impossible for us after my initiation.”

            Sandy leaned into Kozzy. “Is that what you meant by ‘the last time’ in your letter?”

            “Yes…I didn’t write it, because I thought it would sound crude. That maybe you would not want me any more.”

            “Kozzy, take off your gloves.” He does, and Sandy intertwines their fingers. He sighs. “I have missed everything about you, Kozzy. And I have longed for every aspect of your love. Why should the physical expression be a lesser part of that? I want my hand in yours because I love you. I want your mouth on mine because I love you. I want all of you. I always have, ever since I could want anyone. It’s why I didn’t care to do any scrying before we went to my room that Luneil night. I knew it was right.”

            “Are you so sure, now, though?” Kozzy’s wary words were betrayed by his fingers tracing gentle lines on Sandy’s palm and wrist. “Surely the Light would not have sent you to a man who was to become a shadow adept.”

            “I have seen the most unexplainable things attributed to Light, Kozzy.”

            “And yet I am afraid this will hurt more and longer.”

            “Don’t speak of that now, Kozzy. Now…now there is only us, and the moonlight, and the pool. This is a secret, sacred place. A place for us, though your skin is no longer golden, and mine may shine too brightly. Your eyes still shine gold, and at least now, you still need light.”

            “I need more than light,” Kozzy put an arm around Sandy. “I need you.”

            “Are you sure you are not confusing us?” Sandy took the moonlight out of his robe and unstoppered it, and in the sudden cool blaze of light washing over his kind smile in his round golden face, in the rush of it through his shining golden hair and the touch of it in his lambent golden eyes, Kozzy thought that it might be right to think of Sandy and Light as the same. But no. The moment passed, and behind all Sandy’s glory he knew there existed Sandy the sweet-tooth, Sandy with a burn on the top of his foot from early lessons in the hot shop, Sandy who hated being sick, Sandy who had had ordinary freckles, Sandy who liked getting away with things. No matter how great Sandy’s powers grew, Kozzy would always know him as he was.

            “I don’t think that accidentally knocking Light’s head against a headboard would be something that could be forgiven or forgotten, even if I had been a top student,” Kozzy said.

            “It was memorable and there was nothing to forgive.” Sandy grinned at him before taking a drink of moonlight. It flowed down his throat clean and thin, tasting of the smell of pines and new roses, invigorating him. He passed the bottle over to Kozzy, who lifted it to his lips, tilted it up very slowly, and carefully tasted a drop. He sighed a little when he realized it wasn’t going to hurt him, and took a larger sip.

            “The taste of the moonlight almost makes me question my choice,” Kozzy admitted. “In many ways…I still love it. I use my shadow-magic like a light apprentice. But light isn’t just light. It’s the academy, it’s the masters…it’s the Mercy.”

            “Do you scorn me for staying with it?” Sandy asked quietly. He took another drink of moonlight. It was clear but soft, and allowed him to not fear the answer to the question he asked.

            “No.” Kozzy paused, gathering his thoughts. “You’ve always loved light beyond the academy, beyond the bureaucracy. You would never wield the Mercy. The system is a price you pay for the joys of light. And how could I scorn you for seeking joy?” He took the bottle and more moonlight.

            “And do you find joy in shadows, then?” Sandy asked.

            “ _Yes_ ,” Kozzy replied in Shining, and then spoke another strange, short word that, as it was spoken, caused Sandy to inhale with a hiss. “I’m sorry. That was ‘yes’ in Erebusian.”

            “You can lie in Murkish.”

            “Please, Sandy. For my sake…Erebusian. Yes, I can lie in it. But it is often strangely difficult, especially when speaking to a riddling mind.”

            “Erebusian.” The word sat strangely on a tongue still tasting of moonlight, but Sandy thought he could get used to it. “At this moment, then, I will not question you about how you find your joys. Maybe later we will be able to talk of shadows. I know little of them; that is becoming clear to me.”

            Kozzy nodded, and they sat in comfortable silence for several minutes, passing the bottle of light back and forth until it was gone.

            “You know what we should do?” Sandy said, “Just because no one’s probably done so in ages and centuries?”

            “Whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t preclude our doing more familiar things.”

            “Preclude? Perish the thought. It’ll be a prelude.” Sandy laughed. “We should swim in the pool.”

            “What?” Sandy grinned to see Kozzy’s affronted face. “But you said this place was sacred just a little while ago!”

            “I know!” Sandy stood up, and began walking towards the pool. “That’s why we should swim in it. We should swim in it, we should drink it…” He took off his outer robe and folded it neatly before setting it on the tiles.

            “I don’t follow,” Kozzy said, though he followed Sandy nearer the pool and started to remove his own outer garments.

            “Oh, Kozzy, you can’t have lost that much of your lucid reasoning. Just think about it! All of the light apprentices and masters drink light all the time. Most people in the city do so now and then. And that’s pure light! Our magic, our way, our everything. And we think human bodies good enough to hold it. We anoint our skin with it, we use it to heal our injuries—and if this pool is sacred, even if it is more sacred than light itself, that just seems to me to be an argument more in favor of immersing our bodies in it.” He continued removing his clothing and Kozzy, preoccupied with watching more and more golden skin become visible, tripped over his own trousers.

            “That does sound reasonable,” he said, once he had recovered. “But then again you do have a talent for making the most outrageous things seem convincing.”

            Sandy smiled. “It’s not an outrageous argument, though. Otherwise I would have waited until I was naked to make it.”

            Kozzy sighed, and began to reach out for Sandy, desperate to feel that warm, smooth skin under his hands again, but Sandy seemed not to notice and stepped over to the pool.

            “I hope it’s not too cold.” He knelt by the edge. “The well water is usually icy, and at this time of year...” He dipped his hand into the water and waved it back and forth. Laughing, he removed his hand and flicked the water droplets off his fingers. “Every passing moment makes me wish I knew more about this place. It’s not like the well water. It’s not very warm, but it’s not very cold, either. Something must happen to it between the pool and the well.” He looked back at Kozzy, who still wore his undershirt. “Will you swim with me? Or…”

            “No shadow adepts, no shadow apprentices—no one—has seen all my scars.” Kozzy took a deep breath. “I knew you would eventually. Just give me one moment.” And a moment was all it took, before he removed the shirt with one smooth motion. Sandy couldn’t yet see how Kozzy had healed, since they were facing each other, and he decided not to ask him to turn around. He would have the chance for a closer investigation soon enough.

            Kozzy approached the pool and stood by Sandy. “How deep do you think it is?”

            “I think you’ll be able to stand. I don’t know about me.” Sandy looked up at him, smiling gently and taking his hand. “Want to jump in?”

            “ _Jump in_ to a sacred pool?”

            “Better than awkwardly easing ourselves in over the side.”

            Kozzy nodded, ceding the point. They stepped back slightly, and without any further words, ran forward together and leaped up and out and over the pool, still holding hands as they broke the surface with a mighty splash. With the leap, both were submerged entirely, but Kozzy soon found that the water only reached to his nipples while he was standing. Sandy, on the other hand, had to stand on tiptoes so that his nose and mouth remained above water. However, neither one of them wanted to stand around.

            Sandy quickly swam out into the center of the pool, followed more slowly by Kozzy. It was like a light-dream, swimming in this quiet, underground space, surrounded by softly glowing water, his lost lover returned to him. The water itself seemed to share his joy, washing over his skin with what felt almost like some sort of buzzing or tingling. He ducked underneath, opening his eyes and looking through the marvelously clear water at the clean white tiles and the pipe openings along the bottom edge. When he found Kozzy, he resurfaced, laughing. “Can you feel it? This water is alive!”

            Kozzy grinned back at him. “I’m glad you’re here with me. I wouldn’t have done this on my own, but it feels so _right_ to do this! This water _is_ alive…even more than pure light or shadow. I even feel like the pool wants us here, the way the water flows around me.” He spread out his arms and floated on his back.

            Sandy swam under him and surfaced very close, splashing a few drops on Kozzy’s chest. “Open your mouth,” he said. Kozzy did, but not without quickly raising his eyebrows, and Sandy laughed again as he cupped his hands in the pool and poured the luminous water he had collected down Kozzy’s throat. After swallowing, Kozzy stood once more on the bottom of the pool and looked at Sandy, his eyes bright.

            “Your turn.” He made a cup from his hands and offered it to Sandy, who drank with as much formality as if he had been offered a crystal goblet, then lapped at Kozzy’s hands for the last drops. Kozzy laughed in surprise and placed his hands on Sandy’s shoulders. “We are definitely not staying in the pool if that’s how you’re going to be,” he said, running his hands down Sandy’s upper arms.

            Sandy chuckled. “No, I suppose we shouldn’t. This water, though! I feel like I’m being changed—and that’s good! I feel like I’m so alive I’ll never die.”

            “So do I,” Kozzy said, and bent down to kiss him softly on the lips.

            Blushing and grinning, Sandy moved a little closer to one of the edges of the pool. “We’d better get out soon. I’ll race you to the wall—first place’s prize is the second place winner.”

            “You’re absurd,” said Kozzy.

            “And I have a head start.” Sandy smoothly swam away and Kozzy followed with a laugh, knowing that this was a race they were both going to win, but not wanting to keep him waiting any longer than necessary.

            Sandy reached the edge before Kozzy, of course, and he had almost finished drying himself off with his shirt when Kozzy, still dripping wet, embraced him from behind and bent down to press a kiss to his neck. “I should be annoyed with you,” Sandy sighed.

            “I’m not going to apologize for clinging to you while I still can.” His breath was warm on Sandy’s skin. “To not touch light while I can bear it would be the most foolhardy thing I can imagine.”

            “Would you…mind terribly if I asked you not to speak of that?” Pitch had returned his attention to Sandy’s neck and began to suck, the sensation making it difficult for him to organize his thoughts. “It makes me dread the future, and that…doesn’t really encourage me.”

            “I don’t mind at all,” Kozzy said. “I will only speak of us. Here. Now. Where a shadow apprentice is leaving a love-mark on the neck of a light adept.”

            “That’s so wrong,” Sandy murmured, tilting his head so that Kozzy had better access. “Do you think we can get close to comfortable on the tiles if we pile all our clothes up?”

            Kozzy hummed. “Yes. And I knew you’d like me being forbidden again.”

            “I don’t love you just because I shouldn’t,” Sandy said. His eyes never left Kozzy as they used their clothes to create a makeshift bed, with Kozzy’s long cloak covering the rest. “I would weep with joy if we were an ordinary pair of bonded adepts.” He lay down on his side on the cloak, and Kozzy followed, so that they were soon lying close, facing each other. Reaching up his hand to trail it down the line of Kozzy’s jaw, he continued, his voice low: “Yet I won’t deny a certain animal interest in doing things I’m not supposed to, as long as I’m doing them with you.” He moved closer to kiss Kozzy, slow and open-mouthed and gentle. “Because I feel that everything I do with you is so right, it changes what is wrong.”

            Kozzy sighed and kissed him again, embracing him, running one hand over the smooth skin of Sandy’s back, warming quickly now even after their swim, tangling his other hand in his damp curls. Sandy reached out to do the same, though when he touched the corded scars on Kozzy’s back he faltered in their kiss and opened his eyes wide. “Does it hurt at all?” he asked, pressing his forehead to Kozzy’s.

            “Not anymore. The shadow adepts aren’t healers, but they taught me basic wound care. But I can’t—I can’t feel the touch of your hands as vividly as I once did.”

A look of pain crossed Sandy’s face for a moment. “May I still touch them, though? I need to know—with my hands—that you have healed in some way.”

Kozzy nodded. “I understand. I’m glad…I’m glad I never really had to look at what they did.” Sandy’s hand returned to his back, following lines of shiny, taut skin, some raised above the others, some joining into flat plains that Sandy suspected would show even whiter than Kozzy’s new, strange pallor if the light were better. He didn’t know what to feel. His lover was beneath his hands once more, but sadly changed, both by forces he had been told to trust and forces he had been told never to trust. And the ones he had been told to trust had done the most obvious damage.

            Then Kozzy stopped kissing his mouth to leave a trail of kisses from the corner of his lips, across his jawline, down his neck, and to the junction where his shoulder began, and began to nip and suck there, earnestly crafting another love-mark. Sandy panted softly and brought both of his hands to twist in Kozzy’s hair. There was no room for ambiguity of feeling now. The world was nothing but Kozzy’s hands, and mouth, and long, lean body pressed again his shorter, plumper form that Kozzy seemed just as intent on worshiping as he ever had been.

            “Kozzy,” he breathed, the heat of his lover’s erection against his thigh sending reciprocal heat curling through him, “I want to ride you tonight.”

            Leaving the oversensitive spot on Sandy’s neck with one last lick that made him shiver, Kozzy moved so he could look at Sandy, his eyes dark, a wicked grin beginning to bloom on his face. “We’ll do that _first_ , Master Sandren. But there are many reasons why we should stay here all night,” his voice barely faltered, “and I’m not the only one who’s going to have had his back pressed against the tiles before we leave.”

            “Very well,” said Sandy, blushing as he pushed Kozzy onto his back and straddled his hips. “And what should I…” he ran his hands along Kozzy’s stomach and chest, teasing his nipples to hardness, “…what should I tell the king when I show up late and disheveled tomorrow?”

            “Tell him—mm,” Kozzy made a small distracted sound as Sandy moved back just enough to rub the cleft of his rump against Kozzy’s cock, “tell him anything you like.” With the tip of his tongue between his teeth, Kozzy reached out and grasped Sandy’s erection, giving it a firm, deliberate stroke from root to tip, finishing by smearing the bead of pre-come at the slit there and around the head. Sandy let out a small, needy sound, and twitched his hips involuntarily. “Tell him his golden light-adept, his dreambringer, was busy getting fucked by a shadow apprentice.”

            “Kozzy!” Sandy scolded breathlessly, even as he felt his cock throb.

            “Tell him you enjoyed it, too,” Kozzy said, licking the palm of his free hand and switching it with the dry one.

            “You’re awfully confident,” Sandy said, trying to focus on a bastardized light spell he’d perfected for these sorts of occasions.

            “Oh, Sandy, where are your sweet declarations of eternal love now?” Kozzy stroked him a few more times, and Sandy, seeing Kozzy’s grin through his heavy-lidded eyes, leaned forward, pushing his shoulders into his cloak. He wiped that grin away with a deep kiss, pushing his tongue eagerly into Kozzy’s warm and startled mouth.

            “They left when you made your very non-sweet remark,” he said when he broke the kiss. “Now give me a few seconds peace and I’ll be ready to show my love instead of tell you about it.”

            Kozzy obeyed, and was soon rewarded with the sight and sensation of Sandy, his lovely golden Sandy, slowly and smoothly sinking down onto his cock, enveloping him in tight heat as his chest moved with heavy breaths, his lips slightly parted, his eyes almost closed. “Oh, Sandy,” he groaned. “You look—you feel—so good like this.” Sandy smiled a little and his eyes fluttered open.

            “How much can you really see in this dim light, though?”

            “I can see everything,” Kozzy said, a little breathless with waiting for Sandy to move. “Every blush and variation of the shades of your skin, every golden freckle.” He reached out to caress what he could reach of Sandy’s body, his fingers drinking their fill of arms and chest and belly and rump and thighs, and when his attentions there caused Sandy to clench without thinking, Kozzy threw his head back and moaned, “Please, Sandy, please.”

            “As you wish.” Sandy began to move with an easy rhythm that Kozzy was soon able to match his thrusts to perfectly. “Mmm. And as I wish.”

            As their movements became faster and more frenzied, Sandy’s moans crested into the beautiful wave of incoherency they only reached when he was eagerly fucking himself with Kozzy’s cock, though, as always, one word remained intact, echoing off the tiles as Kozzy’s motions brought them together with double force.

            “Kozzy,” Sandy gasped, Sandy cried, Sandy sang, around his hand as he helplessly bit it, as Kozzy caught his hands to steady him, as he reached down to stroke his own cock, unable to resist the sensation or Kozzy’s burning eyes on him as he pleasured himself.

            “Sandy,” Kozzy offered in return, again and again, as if every repetition of his name held more truth than all the words ever spoken in Shining. Let the globe take care of itself, his world was Sandy’s small round body, the living heat surrounding him better than any sunshine he’d lost as a shadow apprentice, the eyes behind fluttering lids better than any waxing and waning moon. “Sandy,” he groaned, the burr of Erebusian creeping into his voice as he took Sandy’s cock in his hand, relishing the smooth, hot, heavy feel of it in his palm.

            Sandy’s rhythm faltered as Kozzy’s hand attended to his length. “Ahhnh! Kozzy, I—”

            “I know,” Kozzy said, with what he could manage of his wicked smile, thrusting up with sudden roughness into Sandy, earning him a glorious drawn-out moan. “Let go.”

            _Thank stars and shadows I can see in the dark_ , Kozzy thought as Sandy came. He wanted every expression of bliss crossing those soft golden features to be burned in his memory forever, living lights that he would never give up, even in the darkness he had chosen for himself. And then the pulse in his hand, the hot wetness spurting across his stomach, the clench around his cock and a last, keening “Kozzy!” conspired to pull him over the edge as well. He shamelessly groaned as he came deep within the newly pliant body of his golden lover, pressing the long fingers of one hand into the soft flesh of his hip to hold him close.

            “Sun and Moon, Kozzy,” Sandy said, several moments later as he carefully lifted himself away from his shadow lover and began to lick his stomach and chest clean, which made Kozzy shiver in overstimulated delight, “Sun and Moon.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

            Kozzy laughed breathily and ran his hand through Sandy’s hair, half-dry and half-damp with water from the pool and now sweat. “And that meant, ‘I love you’.”

            Sandy kissed his stomach and looked into his golden-ringed eyes. “You’re _very_ eloquent.”

 

***

 

Later, while they were resting, they decided to walk around the circumference of the pool. On the center of one wall in between the two doors, they found a painted inscription that tingled with magic and was almost impossible to see unless they were looking at it straight on, and then was unusually clear.

            “Outside of the strange script, it’s almost in Shining,” Sandy said, peering at it. “But some of the vocabulary used is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

            “It’s…almost familiar to me,” Kozzy admitted. “Some of it resembles Erebusian.”

            “Let’s puzzle it out.”

 

            “Well, that large word on top is pretty clearly ‘Moonpool’.”

            “That must be this place. And then below it, it says ‘An Autumn toast to those who drink’.”

            “The next line is pretty clear to me: ‘To the mist at dawn’.”

            “‘The fires at night’, is what follows, I think.”

            “‘The winking eye of the moon’—this script is nearly impossible! It’s worse than the oldest manuscript in the Academy’s library.”

            “I’ve got the last part—‘And the secrets under fallen leaves’.”

 

            “Do you think that there are toasts to the other seasons around the edge that we missed somehow?” Sandy wondered.

            “Maybe the other toasts are at other pools,” Kozzy suggested. “Something to investigate after tonight.” He draped his arm over Sandy’s bare shoulders.

            “Of course,” he said, leaning against him and steering him back towards their makeshift bed.

 

***

 

            Hours later, Sandy was curled into Kozzy’s side, his breaths getting deeper, his blinks getting longer. “Mmm. Sorry about your cloak.”

            Kozzy kissed his forehead. “I wish we had enough time to ruin it entirely.”

            Sandy wrapped an arm around his chest and gripped him tightly, with a shuddery breath. “But we’re out of time, aren’t we? This one stolen night—oh, Kozzy. Can you even imagine it? Us? Seeing each other again, and not being able to touch? All our lives? It’ll drive us mad. At least it will drive me mad. I love you, and I love light, and I won’t be able to fully do both after you become a shadow adept.”

            “I have to do it, Sandy. I’ve been called to it. As strongly as I was called to light.” His fingertips traced along Sandy’s arm. “But I do not think you will go mad. There is too much light in you for you to ever go mad,” he said softly. “And…you could always fall out of love with me. In love with someone else.”

            “I won’t. _I won’t_ ,” he repeated in Shining. “I couldn’t. Do you…do you think you will?”

            “ _No_. But I…I’m not concerned with the pain of loss I’ll feel. I left, I deserve it. But I feel panicky, torn in two, when I realize that you will be in pain because of me.”

            “Kozzy.” He looked up, met his eyes. “I’m going to try something. Let light really flow through me…and speak. Do you want to risk it?”

            “Will you whisper it first? Whatever it is. I am afraid, Sandy.”

            “All right.” Sandy closed his eyes, feeling within his mind for the sense of light, the sense of magic that always remained with him, even away from all the bottles of light, all the enchanted glass, all the purified sand. He found it, like a burning ember at the top of his skull, and begged it to guide his voice as he spoke, swearing he would never use this power so frivolously again. And then he whispered, in Shining-Always-True: “ _All will be well_.” He laughed, amazed and relieved, and said again louder, “ _All will be well_.” And then, like an unexpected twin, another word followed: “ _Someday_.”

            “There’s a light-speech if I ever heard one,” Kozzy said, trying to sound wry and failing.

            “ _All will be well someday_.” Sandy repeated. “I’ll take it. Even a lifetime is not so long with that assurance.” Yet as he spoke he clung tighter to Kozzy.

            They were silent for long moments. “Perhaps an exception will be made for me,” Kozzy said. “Perhaps since I was so nearly a light adept your touch will not harm me once I am a shadow adept. After all, this has never happened before. We don’t know…”

            “And we would go and live in a secret place, away from this city.” Sandy rested his hand against Kozzy’s chest. “Where no one has ever been told to fear shadow adepts.”

            “And it will be someday, and all will be well.” Kozzy took Sandy’s hand. “You can tell the sun has risen, can’t you? If I don’t leave soon I won’t be able to get back to the place of my initiation in time.”

            “The winter solstice.”

            “Yes.”

            He didn’t elaborate, and in that moment Sandy suddenly knew that if he really wanted to, he could keep Kozzy here with him. He could persuade him to stay in the city, to live with him in a house near that palace. He could keep him, and Kozzy would allow himself to be kept, for Sandy’s sake. He would allow himself to remain neither a light nor a shadow adept, but a nearly completed apprentice of both. And he knew just as much as this was possible, it would make their love a bitter thing, undying, but not as it should be. Oh, but at least they would be able to touch!

            Sandy sat up slowly, moving Kozzy’s cloak aside to get to his clothing. He would not keep Kozzy. They were always meant to be equals, and so they would be, even if they had to find their equality as opposites.

            Kozzy rose as well, then, and they both dressed, all their clothes somewhat worse for the wear. He turned his cloak inside out before fastening it.

            “I do not want you to go,” Sandy said, reaching out for Kozzy’s hands. “I know you must go. Promise me you will return to the city after you have become a shadow adept.”

            “To see if an exception has been made?” Kozzy’s tone was too solemn for his words.

            “I doubt it will be.” Sandy squeezed his hands tightly, then looked him in the eyes. “But if I cannot touch your body I must touch your mind the more.”

            Kozzy lifted his hands to his lips and kissed them. “It will not be easy, my star.”

            “ _But all will be well someday._ ”

 

            Kozzy used what he already knew of shadow magic to divert citizens from the well house and they were able to emerge into an empty room. No doubt earlier visitors had seen the dark opening and the displaced stone slab, but all had been wise enough to avoid it. Sandy moved the slab back into place and, when he was done, looked up to see Pitch putting his gloves back on and getting ready to wind the scarf around his face.

            “Wait,” Sandy said, pulling off his gloves and taking hold of his hands. “One more kiss, please, before…”

            “Before,” Kozzy repeated. He bent his head down and Sandy rose on his toes, and they kissed, selfish and generous and as if they were responsible for showing the world what a kiss should be.

            After the kiss, Sandy looked away as Kozzy prepared himself to go out into the pale winter sunlight. Tears threatened to fall, but he refused to let them. He would see him again. All would be well. Now was not yet the time to cry.

            They walked out of the well house hand in hand, and at the street corner they looked at each other, all-gold eyes into part-gold eyes. “We don’t go the same way from here,” Kozzy said.

            “I wish you well.” Sandy pulled him into a last embrace. “ _I love you_.”

            “ _I love you_ ,” Kozzy breathed. “And we will speak, at least. Soon.” He let him go and turned away. Sandy watched his dark, slender shape retreat under the white, clouded sky for as long as he could. Soon though, the cutting wind carrying the first snowfall of the year drove him to turn and make his way back to the palace, where upon his arrival he planned to tell the king precisely nothing. There was nothing about this night he deserved to know, and it was too precious to lie about.

 

            And all might have been, if not well, at least stable, save for the scene that occurred soon after their parting when Kozzy was recognized by other light adepts at the Great Moon Fountain.

 

***

 

            Centuries later, Pitch and Sandy stand together by the Great Moon Fountain. “You know, I don’t think I’ve actually drunk any water from here since the morning after we swam in the moonpool,” Pitch remarks, sounding surprised. “For years after I would have been arrested on sight, and then I was gone, and I just lost the tradition, somewhere along the way.”

            “I drank some the last time I was in the city,” Sandy says. He’s brought glasses from the house for them. The glass dippers are long gone. “I always have, for tradition’s sake. But I don’t think I’ve paid attention to it since the dimming began.” He passes a glass to Pitch, who carefully takes it and fills it under one of the many streams of water. Sandy fills his own glass, and raises it to Pitch. “To success in our endeavors.”

            “And the washing away of our failures,” Pitch responds, and they both drink.

            After the first sip, Pitch drinks again, a puzzled expression growing on his face. “Sandy? Tell me I’m not mad, but I would stake my memory that this is not the same water that used to flow in this fountain.”

            Sandy frowned and took another drink, swirling the water around in his mouth before swallowing. “It tastes…familiar…but familiar as something over the past few centuries…it’s not what I drank when I was chosen by light. Yes, I remember that clear enough. And it’s not what we drank that night…Pitch, you’re right: this is not moonpool water.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on bonded adepts: Light Adepts don't marry, but they are bonded. Usually, soon after becoming a master, a light adept will perform a scrying to see who Light will guide them to as a match/soulmate. This compatibility may or may not have to do with romantic love. The light adepts offer no comment to anyone on whether bonded adepts regularly have sexual relationships. Bonded adepts are usually pairs of any gender combination. The greatest number bonded ever recorded was a group of ten, but that is another story.


	7. The Great Library/A Task Unworthy of a Light Adept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy begin to search for answers in the Great Library, Toothiana's secret is revealed, and even more books turn out to be missing.
> 
> Pitch Black's early days in the city are recalled. He's made himself a problem, and one that the light adepts are willing to solve by any means necessary. Sandy is having none of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of doing archival work without being able to use internet databases OR browse the stacks gives me nightmares. As do lost books. (Seriously, though--the library is the worst place to lose a book. And I've heard stories of people deliberately mis-shelving books so that no one else can use them and they can't be recalled for others' use...these are horror stories.)
> 
> TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A GRAD STUDENT. Anyway, onto the story...

The Great Library, like the house on Fountain Square and many of the more ancient buildings in the city, is constructed primarily of warm golden limestone. Unlike many of those buildings, however, it offers a visual example of the weathering process of that golden limestone, from the oldest building in the center of the library campus to the outer ring of structures only a few decades old. Narrow footpaths lined with shade-loving flowers connect each library building at ground level, though many are also joined by bridges enclosed with gleaming stained glass at the second or third story.

            Sandy and Pitch walk down one of these footpaths early the next morning, careful not to converse and risk drawing attention to Pitch. They are heading toward the main building, the first constructed, the center of all library operations, and the storage site for Lunar Kingdom records, special collections, and the library’s oldest, rarest, and most valuable books. It towers above the rest of the campus despite its age, and in its height and the brilliance of its many-colored windows Sandy see evidence of the reassuring combination of skill and magic.

            As they approach the main doors, Sandy smiles and risks glancing up at Pitch, who smiles back. For five hundred years, and probably five hundred years before that, the entrance to the Great Library has remained the same, marking it out as a place a little bit strange, a little bit wild. To enter the library is a task asking for courage, the gate warning those who enter that the quest for knowledge might eat them alive.

            “I still think that’s the most curious welcome I’ve ever gotten anywhere,” Sandy murmurs, eyeing the warning inscription carved on the vast whale’s jawbone that arches over the doors, heavy aged oak framing patterns of blue and green glass like the sea in sunlight and full of as many bubbles.

            “You mean you expected the way I greeted you on the day of the solar eclipse?” Pitch murmurs back.

            “Nothing was unexpected or curious about that day, Pitch. It was simply another part of the terrible, perfectly balanced pattern we always seem to find ourselves in.” He smiles. “Which is not to say there have not been certain imperfections, thank heaven. You wearing my clothes. The apple turnover you bought me. The house’s broken plumbing. In the cold water I lamented that we were not a star-story, but I am glad of it now. When the stars deviate from their courses they bring destruction. When people deviate from their courses…destruction is not necessarily the result.”

            “Something must be destroyed, though,” Pitch argues. He’s not sure if he believes it, but it’s the kind of thing he would say to Sandy, and so he does. Anything to get Sandy to keep talking, to not lose his voice in loneliness again.

            “And something must be created,” Sandy says, gesturing at the jaw, holding teeth the size of his forearms. “Unlike a star-story, the endings of people can be completely unexpected, not just destruction or return to the status quo. That’s what I’ve always liked about this entryway. It’s messy. Nothing about it fits together, but it’s endured. Gathered its own traditions.” He gestures at the coin-like medallions of tin and lead that library patrons have shoved in the cracks between the teeth, token payments for wisdom with their names scratched into the soft metal. Those who cannot afford such medallions tie metallic or brightly-colored ribbons to the tips of the teeth, making the jaw, so huge and inscribed with such an ominous greeting, glitter festively in the morning light. “I’m sure neither the beast, nor the hunter, nor the creator of the inscription, knew that this would happen. And yet, here it is. Showing that old patterns can change into new patterns, even if no one knows the reason why.”

            They step forward under the jaw to the main doors. “Some hunters would have wanted this to happen to their kill’s bones,” Pitch remarks. “Perhaps seeming new patterns are merely the reassertions of older, more harmonious ones.”

            “You’ll have me talking to myself all day,” Sandy says with a smile, his voice dropping as he pushes open the main doors.

 

            The lobby of the main building of the Great Library—nicknamed the Tooth Palace by some in reference to its strange gateway—is a small, high-ceilinged room dimly lit by the sunlight filtering through the glass of the doors and a few other windows. All the light is transformed to blues and greens by the glass, and standing on the buttery limestone floor in the cool and uneven light seems like the beginning of a journey along the bottom of a shallow, sunny sea.

            A young woman dressed in the tight-sleeved green robes that have been worn, with little variation, as the uniforms of library workers for well over five hundred years, looks up from her desk as Pitch and Sandy enter. Her gaze is solely devoted to Sandy, and Pitch is pleased to note that not even her unconscious movements lead her eyes to him.

            “Master Sandren,” she says, standing. “The Director told me that you would be coming today. Now, everyone in the city knows who you are and we know we can trust you…” she pulls on her fingers nervously to crack the knuckles, “But ever since, you know, the shadow adept was here, we’ve been having everyone who visits sign this book when they arrive and again when they leave.” She taps the large, new-looking book in front of her. “If you would be so kind…and then I’ll show you to the reading room. I can probably set up a private alcove for you…”

            “I’ll be glad to sign the book,” Sandy says, walking forward, “But is there any way I could speak to Director Toothiana before I begin my research today? I have a special request, you see, and I thought I would appeal directly to her authority.”

            “Oh!” The young woman suddenly seems even younger, barely more than a girl. “I—I suppose I can go find her. Um. Yes. She will speak to you, I’m sure.”

            Sandy reaches out and grasps one of her hands comfortingly. “She’ll know I sent you and that you’re not just bothering her,” he says, and she calms.

            “I’ll be back in a moment,” she says, before exiting through a small door richly carved with feather patterns.

            “What?” Sandy says, looking up at Pitch, feeling his gaze upon him.

            “You know.” Pitch glances at his hands.

            “It’s the best way I have to get people to calm down without doing anything more specific. To be honest I’m surprised I remember how, after spending so much time alone.”

            Pitch scoffs quietly. “Sandy, you’d probably know how to do that if you had been raised by wolves and were encountering people for the first time today. I know you haven’t had much in the way of comparison for a very long while, but you use light more effortlessly and variously than anyone else I ever saw.”

            “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

            “Indeed. So what’s the special request?”

            “To go into the stacks,” Sandy says casually. “I don’t think what we’re looking for is going to be found by the pages, no matter how good they are at their jobs.”

 

            Director Toothiana wears the same pair of green-tinted glasses today as she did at North’s party, though her clothing is far more subdued: a version of the standard library uniform with a gold band around the collar and shimmery blue bands at her wrists and the bottom hem to mark her authority. Her black hair is gathered underneath a net of gold thread decorated with colorful semiprecious stones. To complete her outfit, she wears earrings that are simply small peacock feathers, one of which she smooths nervously after Sandy makes his request.

            “It’s very irregular,” she says. “I could offer my assistance as your page if you’re concerned about the knowledge of the other pages and librarians. No one knows these collections better than I do.”

            “Director,” Sandy begins. He regrets not having tried to send her some serenity when they touched fingertips in greeting. All her movements speak of a great reservoir of nervous energy constantly overflowing, and with the way she’s erratically pacing back and forth, Sandy worries that Pitch will be discovered by her accidentally running into him. “As someone who knows the collections, surely you are aware that the particular collection I will be interested in includes many oddities and difficult-to-classify manuscripts, among other things. When I directed the move of the materials of the Luminous Academy’s library to this one, I saw a lot of things getting transferred that I am certain could not be catalogued normally.

            “Additionally, I may need to see many of the items together—”

            “I wouldn’t dream of limiting the number of items you could call out at one time,” Toothiana interrupts.

            Pitch sees Sandy’s shoulders set into part of what he’s always thought of as the ‘whether-you-like-it-or-not’ stance.

            “Additionally,” Sandy repeats, “I may need to see many of the items together, including not only material from the Luminous Academy’s library but also material that has always been kept in the Great Library. The work I am doing must be done on a collection-level scale. As a light adept, I have certain skills that enable me to glean meaning and information from seemingly insignificant details, but I need to have a vast number of these details before me for my investigation. The library, while I am sure it is impeccably organized, is not organized in the way that facilitates my work, if attempted through normal channels. I need to _browse_.”

            “Are you saying that you would be working magic in the library stacks?” Toothiana asks, stilling. Pitch raises his eyebrows and reevaluates his estimation of her as a nervous little hummingbird. “That is absolutely out of the question. I’m sorry, Master Sandren. I don’t know much about magic, but I saw what Jack Frost did, and I know all the stories. Magic changes whatever it touches. It has no place being used in a library. Our archive is fragile enough as it is.”

            Her tone is final, but Sandy’s stance hasn’t changed, and Pitch knows even if Toothiana doesn’t that the next step is breaking and entering, and he’d prefer to avoid that. He reaches out as carefully as he can with a shadow-question in his mind. There was something about her last speech that seemed to alert him to something. As he looks for some kind of leverage, she glances almost directly at him, and this gives him his answer.

            “Sandy, try to get her to take her glasses off,” Pitch whispers in his ear.

            Sandy frowns for a moment. He knows Pitch is trying to help him but this advice seems nonsensical. Still, anything is worth a shot at this point. “All right,” he says calmly. “Today I will accept your offer of acting as my page. As we work together, however, I hope it will become clear to you why I need access to the stacks. I’ll sign in now, if you don’t mind.”

            Toothiana nods. “I hope that as we work together it will become clear to you why it is entirely impossible that you should enter the stacks.” She gestures him over to the book, and when she leans slightly forward to watch him sign his name, he pulls on the lenses of her glasses with just the slightest touch of magic, and it looks like she was hiding something, for they fall off easily.

            She gasps quietly, just the softest of indrawn breaths, and picks up her green glasses and puts them back on within seconds, but not before meeting Sandy’s eyes for a brief moment.

            They’re not brown, like he thought. They’re ruby red. Only the colored lenses make them look normal. “You’re from the Empire of the Five Beacons,” he breathes, his head bent by hers so that the girl who greeted him can’t hear. “And you’re a fire adept.”

            Toothiana pales, and Sandy now notices that her warm brown skin contains more red tones than are usual for those native to the Lunar Kingdom. “Simone!” she calls to the girl, her voice admirably level. “Go and prepare a private study alcove for Master Sandren. I will take care of things here.” When the girl is gone, she stands up, pressing her glasses even nearer her eyes. “I’m not a fire adept,” she says. “I left my school before my initiation, as custom allows. During my year of travel I fell in love with the Great Library and so I stayed in the City of the Moon and worked odd jobs until I became a page. I worked my way up from that.”

            “You may have never worked as a fire adept,” Sandy notes, “but your initiation would have just been a formality. I know a little bit about the education of fire. You have all the power of those formally initiated.”

            “I don’t practice,” she looks down, twining her fingers. When she looks up again she meets Sandy’s clear, uncompromising gaze. “Much.”

            _Never apologize for magic!_ Sandy wants to tell her, but this situation demands more delicacy than the bold statement of principles. “Director, you know that doesn’t matter. And you knew it didn’t matter when you started wearing your glasses. Even when you started working here—which I’m guessing was before the series of laws regarding Verdans were enacted—you knew there would be trouble if anyone knew a fire worker was employed by the library.”

            “It’s my dream.” Her voice is small. “But I know that to everyone else it sounds like a nightmare. Fevretrix in a library. Are you…going to tell anyone?”

            “No,” Sandy says. “Obviously nothing bad has happened to the library under your direction.”

            “Will you tell anyone about me if I refuse to let you work in the stacks?”

            “No,” Sandy answers, and he can hear Pitch sighing behind him. Well, let him sigh. He’s not going to blackmail anyone. “But I would like to try and persuade you one more time. You mentioned Jack Frost in your argument against magic in the library. The Frost boy was entirely untrained. I have been practicing my art for five hundred years, give or take. What happened with Frost is irrelevant, especially if you are the only one who knows of my presence in the stacks.

            “You also said that magic is change. Now that I know you are a fevretrix, I understand why you said that. In hindsight it almost gave you away.”

            “What? But how?”

            “Most people in the city have no familiarity with magic anymore save for the dreams I send. As someone with her own magic, busy with her job and working to conceal her identity for her own safety, you might not have noticed it, but this city—this land is almost empty of the magic that should be here. When you make a statement about magic, you’re asserting knowledge that almost everyone in the Lunar Kingdom has been deprived of for a very long time.”

            “But the king issues statements on magic—your magic—often.”

            Sandy is careful to keep his face neutral. “The king is the king. The point I was trying to make, Director, is that as a fevretrix, magic as change is what you were taught.”

            “Of course, of course,” Toothiana drums her fingers impatiently on a desk. “Fire is fundamentally about transformation. Magic is that transformation, that change—and that destruction.”

            “Fire magic is. But I’m not a fire adept. I’m a light adept, and light magic deals in revelation. My magic won’t hurt your archive. I daresay I might even find a lost book or two. That is,” he says, catching her expression, “if there were any unaccounted for.”

            She touches the earpieces of her glasses, looking thoughtful.

            “Please, Director. Imagine being the only fevretrix left in the world. If I can do my research with access to the stacks, I may finally be able to find out why no new light adepts have been found for centuries. And why this land is so drained of magic.

            “Imagine the Empire feeling like this city, and you alone in it.”

            She shivers. “Did the shadow adept steal the books because he wanted to stop you from discovering these things? To be alone forever?”

            Sandy can only imagine the face Pitch is making at those questions. He shakes his head. “Pitch Black is just as alone in shadows as I am in light. The question of the stolen books is…complex.”

            Toothiana frowns and steps into the blue-green light from the windows. “I think I would die if I was the only fevretrix. I think I would die if I was the only librarian—it’s not the same, I know, anyone can learn to be a librarian.” She tugs at the edges of her tight sleeves. “But the library is most important to me right now. Even as a fevretrix. Master Sandren—”

            “Sandy,” he says.

            “Do you think that if you found out why you’ve been alone for so long, you could tell the king, and maybe—maybe it would get easier for those of us who aren’t Selenians?”

            “I would like nothing more than to show the king and the kingdom that the measures he’s taking against non-Selenians have nothing to do with the restoration of the light adepts.”

            She nods. “All right then. I’ll get you access to the stacks.”

 

            “Blackmailing her would have been so much faster,” Pitch says, stepping around shafts of sunlight pouring in through high windows as he and Sandy walk through the maze of shelves and drawers that crowd the upper levels of the Tooth Palace.

            “Yes, and I know that’s what you wanted me to do,” Sandy says, sounding slightly distracted as he glances back and forth between a printed map of the stacks and the signs painted on the ends of the shelves. “But it’s not what I wanted to do and here we are in the stacks anyway.” He frowns. “It looks like we should be turning _left_ into a little sort of, well, bump on the building, but I don’t see—”

            “This shelf moves.” Pitch points to the wavy line on the map. “At least I assume that’s what that line means, I’m just sensing it as a sort of secret.”

            “Ah.” Sandy walks over to the edge of the shelf and pushes on a large brass flower set into the wood, and the shelf slides away on thin brass tracks that had been unnoticeable among the metal and glass intricacies of the mosaic that forms the library floor. With all the shelves, it’s impossible to see what it is, and Sandy wonders how long it’s been since anyone saw it in full. The Great Library has needed this space for books for at least as long as he’s been alive. If he could see anything about it in full, he could probably guess the age. Some of the yellow and violet tiles seem familiar, somehow—His train of thought breaks as the room behind the shelf appears.

            It is not a large space, nor is it particularly elaborate. The shelves and cases are made of the same polished wood, brass, and glass as the others in the library, and the warm colors of the window glass do not let in any more sunlight than the rest of the library’s windows. Under the rose and orange and butter-yellow lights, the room is actually extremely crowded, tall shelves taking up most of the floor space. Only in the center of the room is there any breathing room, provided by a large blondwood table with a few book holders of various sizes resting upon it.

            Yet despite the furnishings that make it seem like any other part of the library, the books visible on the shelves are distinctive, and, in many cases, suddenly and surprisingly familiar, their presence like needles in Sandy’s heart. That common shade of leather on the bindings! That stylized sun, embossed everywhere! The huge, heavy chronicles, their spines all adorned with topaz!

            And then, a thousand times more powerful than the vision: the scent. The midafternoon smell of aging books in this room is unlike that which comfortably lingers in the rest of the library. These old books are the Academy’s old books, and despite mingling with the others that were already present, despite the long overland journey that was necessary for each volume, they still manage to create an atmosphere that, for a brief moment, sends Sandy back to his school days with a dizzying clarity that he gladly allows to wash over him. He breathes deeply and hears Pitch doing so as well.

            “If I hadn’t managed to persuade Toothiana to let us into the stacks today, I think blackmail would have looked like a viable option tomorrow.” Sandy enters the room, followed closely by Pitch. He passes his hand near the spines of the books on the nearest shelf, not touching any of them, but close enough so that the books could feel the heat of his hand if they, too, had been flesh.

            “Why the change of heart?” Pitch asks as he walks his long fingers down the spines.

            “Because we’re archives too. And the smell of the Academy library—that’s one of the keys to the rooms.”

            “Have you found something already?”

            Sandy shakes his head. “But what I remembered just now might help.” He makes his way to the table at the center of the room. “All right. We’re looking for anything that will tell us something about the early history of the light adepts, the source of light magic, or why light adepts would die out.” His face compresses in concentration for a moment before clearing. “Pitch, can you withstand me doing a light-working that fills this room? It’s not very big.”

            After muttering a few words in Erebusian, Pitch nods.

            Sandy takes a deep breath, spreading his arms wide, then breathes out sharply as he brings his hands together, stopping them just before they could sound a clap. Pitch sees the working spiral out from Sandy, enveloping the room in a confusingly complex web of light that eddies around Pitch yet also seems to by trying to press _through_ him. The light vanishes almost as quickly as it appears, and all the books and all the items in the drawers jump or twitch. The noise is awkwardly loud, and Pitch goes to close the bookshelf-door while Sandy curses.

            “Well, that worked but didn’t help,” Sandy taps his foot against the mosaic, which continues even into this part of the library.

            “What was that?” Pitch asks.

            “Oh, something I figured out when we were at the Academy, though I didn’t use it more than a couple times. The working will make books that contain information on the subject you’re looking for reveal their presence in some way, as long as you have a fairly clear idea of what you’re looking for.”

            “But the Academy library was very well organized.”

            “It lacked a few sections.” Sandy laughs. “Anyway, I know you appreciated what I used the working for back then. _Now_ , though, my ideas of what I’m looking for are either a lot less clear, or there’s something relevant in every volume. Probably both, considering that this is the adept history section.”

            Pitch shakes his head in astonishment. Sometimes he’s absolutely sure that Sandy doesn’t understand the extent of his own powers. That light-working he had just done without words, without song, required strong, strong mental intimacy with light—and he had taught himself how to do it as a student! Well, he can bother Sandy about that later. “What do we do now?” he asks.

            “Start looking for the oldest thing in this room and read it when we find it.”

 

            Pitch yawns. “It’s noon now, isn’t it? I feel like a walking corpse.”

            “Two minutes till, actually,” Sandy says, distracted, as he pages through a chronicle. Asking it for information with magic had resulted only in it shaking alarmingly until all the collected sand and dust in its spine had been dislodged. The small amount of detritus had then swirled around vaguely for a few moments, at times seeming as purposeful as the enchanted sand on the Isle of Dreams. After a few minutes, however, it had seemed to recognize that there was not enough of it to coalesce into a useful vision and it had all fallen to the floor.

            Without the dust the book seemed somewhat less stable and Sandy had guiltily resolved not to do that again.

            “If you want to take a nap, you might as well. It’s not like we’ve found any leads so far.”

            “I’ve become resigned to the fact that I won’t be sleeping like a shadow adept for a while. I just wanted to fruitlessly complain about something that doesn’t have to do with the library.”

            Sandy looks up from the book and smiles fondly at him. “What’s that for?” Pitch asks. “Daytime always puts me in a terrible mood and I never bother to hide it.”

            “You couldn’t say that in Shining,” Sandy says. “And why shouldn’t I smile at you?”

            “Apart from the very serious reasons?”

            “Yes, apart from the constant mythic background that makes both our lives so absurd. Look, Pitch, even if you’re a grump in the daytime, at least we’re working together again, in the city. And this time we know no one can tell us to stop.”

            “We never worked together,” Pitch says. “I taught you Erebusian and you never spoke it.”

            “But we spent time together. And now we’re spending more time together than we have since then. We’re even staying in the same house. It’s not exactly how I imagined it but…” He turns back to the chronicle. “Oh, this _thing_! I could swear there’s something important here, if only I had a few more crucial pieces of information. Or a few more crucial books. Like older chronicles!”

            “Are those on the list of books I purportedly stole?” Pitch asks. The book he’s been looking through is a particularly dense treatise on the making of light-glass that he’s confident is free from any threat of theft.

            “No—that is, not all of them. The others _apparently_ were never here in the first place, which is a load of bollocks because I personally loaded every book to be transferred onto the wagons, travelled with the caravan, and saw them unloaded, and there were more chronicles both of the Academy and the Light Adepts general. I remember because they were heavy. But no. No catalogue entries at all.” He flips to the first page and shakes his head. “And it wasn’t as if I could have stayed. Candence was dying and the others were too old to travel…” He slams his hand down on the table. “Show me some meaning!” he yells at the book. “‘King’s militia destroys secret community of shadow adepts, L.Y. 1321’, ‘First Quarter Moon dormitory constructed, L.Y. 1322’, ‘Despite censure by the Light Adepts, L.K. enacts law lowering the age at which those convicted of capital crimes may be hanged, L.Y. 1324’ What does it add up to? There’s a key, I know it.”

            “Why not—why not try looking for what’s not there?” Pitch suggests, laying his head down on his arms, his eyelids drooping.

            Sandy looks thoughtful. “Yes,” he says slowly. “Like burning one name off a family tree ends up outlining it in red ink. Have you noticed anything like that already?”

            “Maybe. We’re not having much luck with old documents, but most everything from a few hundred years before we were born up till the chronicles stopped being kept is here. Except I haven’t found any references to my banishment, nor to the day of the Battle of the Hunter’s Moon.”

            “And those events were certainly written down. They were so memory-searing, they had to be.”

 

***

 

            Kozzy had returned to the City of the Moon as Pitch Black, and his presence in the city was, to most, like a dark storm cloud hovering in a clear sky. Lightning had not struck from him yet, but it was understood that it was only a matter of time before this happened.

            Part of the problem was that, unlike most other shadow adepts, Pitch did not hide what he was. This meant, of course, that he ended up living in the worst part of the city, catering only to the desperate and depraved. However, despite the way in which he was forced to make a living, he, frustratingly, did not vanish into the background except when he wanted to. He did not confine himself to slums, and in fact often neglected to buy food so that he could purchase clothing suitable for travel through most areas of the city.

            Yet despite being so visible, he was never caught working any shadow magic, though everyone knew he must, for how else would one such as he make money? Still, with no credible eyewitnesses willing to step forward and say they had seen him working with shadows, the laws of the Lunar Kingdom that forbade the study of Shadow could not touch him. This unnerved the city, for while most understood that there were a few shadow adepts living here and there, doing underworld business, none but Pitch had dared to live such an open life.

            And while he was never caught doing shadow magic, his appearance marked him clearly enough as a shadow adept. His grayish skin, his black hair that refused to shine like a normal person’s, the eerie dark silver of his eyes, and the black clothing he always wore all set him apart from ordinary citizens. His tall stature, extreme slenderness, and hawklike profile, though these would have belonged to him even had he become a light adept, also added to his unsettling appearance. Some said, and they were right to say it, that he enjoyed disturbing the people of the city, wandering the night and appearing not in the expected dark alleys but in crowded late markets and outside fine parties beginning to disperse, looking, some said, like Death.

            But to others he did not look like Death. He looked like something much worse, and the horror of him only grew if one dared approach close enough to see the shading of his irises. That ring of gold around the pupil spoke volumes that the light adepts and the Luminous Academy did not wish to ever be spoken.

            Pitch Black, walking through the city as if he had a right to it and flaunting his strange eyes, was a living reminder that magic was not safe, and his eyes asserted in their two colors that light could be turned to shadow.

            Sandy wasn’t sure how it started, but he was positive that when the other light adepts started calling Pitch “The Traitor”, it had been part of a conscious plan to distance Pitch from the light adepts. However, Sandy also wasn’t sure that renaming Pitch like that really helped separate him from his former life. Calling someone not merely a traitor, but The Traitor, seemed like an invitation for someone to inquire as to who or what had been betrayed. He didn’t offer this opinion to his light adept friends. Upon Pitch’s return to the city, he had begun to try to appear infinitely busy with court life and his own researches into Light. Infinitely busy, and certainly not someone who would ever be seen seated carefully across from a tall dark figure at a corner table in a seedy dockside pub.

 

            “They want to arrest you,” Sandy said, closing the notebook that held his notes on Erebusian. Pitch was teaching him the language before anything else about the shadow adepts, having said that to understand Erebusian was to already halfway understand shadow. Sandy, turning the strange and, to his ears, uncomfortable words, over in his mind, wondered if learning the shadow tongue was not merely a bridge to understanding but also a necessary desensitization process, allowing one to accept other shadow ideas. Either way, he retained vocabulary only with difficulty. Tonight’s lesson had been especially troublesome, what with everything else that was on his mind.

            “I know. They’ll need to catch me doing something illegal first.” Pitch drained the rest of his glass of the surprisingly good dark beer brewed by the owner of the Drowned Boy.

            “It’s not like how it was. I was at Fountain Square today and I heard some adepts talking. They said they’d been speaking with the militia, planning out how they were going to catch you. Specific plans, Pitch! Not just general ill-will.” He drummed his fingers on the table.

            “They still need witnesses to say I’m actually breaking the law.” Pitch’s tone was unconcerned.

            “And considering you _are_ , I daresay it won’t take that long to find them.”

            “Sandy, they’ve been trying. No one’s come forward. If I have been doing anything illegal, the value received seems to outweigh the rewards offered by the militia, no matter how high they are.” He paused. “The rewards are backed by light adept money, aren’t they?”

            Sandy colored beneath his heavy brown scarf. “Yes. And so you know they could be raised considerably. But even without that, Pitch, how can you trust any of your clients? I know you have them, even though you’re phrasing your statements to me so that I could deny anything about you even when asked in Shining—or—as if you don’t trust me either—”

            “I trust you to be Master Sandren, light adept,” Pitch interrupted. “Forgive me if I’m still working out what that means to me, Pitch Black.”

            _I want to talk to Kozzy!_ Sandy thought but didn’t say. He took a deep breath. “So what about your clients? The kind of people that go to shadow adepts, I mean, Pitch… _those_ are the kind of people you’re trusting with your freedom?”

            “You know nothing of the kind of people that seek out shadow adepts,” Pitch snapped, then looked down at the scarred surface of the table and ran his hand over his face. “And I suppose that is partially because I have not told you, but—stars, Sandy. Not everyone can go to Fountain Square and ask for help if they need it.”

            “Of course they can,” Sandy said, puzzled. “It’s in the charter of the light adepts—well, not the Fountain Square part specifically, but we give aid to all, and everyone gets the dreams from the great dream glass…”

            “Except for the king and various other elite personages who pay dearly to have their own resident, personal dreamweavers.”

            Sandy didn’t reply. The silk under the coarse, simple clothes he wore for these meetings suddenly seemed less comfortable.

            Pitch closed his eyes and sighed. “Look, Sandy, I’m sorry I was sharp with you. But you have to understand that sometimes shadow adepts aren’t sought out just for the things they can do that light adepts can’t. And what I can do has been valuable enough to my clients that none have come forward yet. I believe I am safe on that front.”

            “No, Pitch, I’m sorry. I—I’ve been trying to avoid understanding. In the palace I can. Because it hurts to really see what’s going on. It’s blood and loss…I wanted to pretend that everything could go on the way it has for the past year, but now I can’t avoid at least a little bit of reality pushing through. They really want to arrest you, Pitch. They don’t like you stalking around, apparently proving that Light can make mistakes. They don’t want the people they encounter to be reminded that magic can be dangerous.” Sandy looked up. “True, they don’t care that down here, by the docks, or in Umbraton or even around Taeko Road or in Frigoris, that people see shadow adepts, but that was because the shadow adepts generally stayed there. You’ve broken all the rules. Maybe they can’t prove you’ve broken any laws yet. But they’re going to arrest you or they’re going to get rid of you, one way or another.”

            “Well, they won’t be able to get another shadow adept to do it for them,” Pitch said flippantly, catching the eye of one of the barmaids and gesturing for more beer.

            “Please, don’t joke about that.” Sandy lowered his voice. “Shadow adepts aren’t the world’s only assassins. You defended your clients, but are you _sure_ that none of them would be swayed by a bounty on your head fifty times higher than what’s currently being offered for information?”

            Pitch sighed again and pushed Sandy’s second beer towards him. “With money like that on the line, I cannot be sure of anyone. Happy now?”

            “Of course not. You’re in danger. They’ll try to get you out of the city nonviolently at first, but if they can’t…”

            “You keep saying ‘they’. All this is being done by people I know—knew, that is— correct?”

            Sandy took a long drink. “Who else is there?”

            “They think I’ve become a monster. Have I, Sandy?”

            “I hope not,” he said. “But I still don’t know what you do for your clients. Shadow is everything light is not, and—here:” Pitch’s hand rested on the table and Sandy reached out his own to cover it. His arm was visibly relaxed, but a force held his hand hovering a finger-width above Pitch’s. “We are inimical to each other now. It may have seemed like a game at the moonpool—” Sandy drew his hand back. “but now? When we can’t even touch thanks to the powers within us? You could be a monster, Pitch, if you wanted.”

            “And they don’t trust me not to be.”

            “You were the sun rising in the West. You still are.”

            Pitch leans back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. “You could be a monster too, you know, Sandy. A monster of light. Maybe you already are.”

            “If I am, it’s no good for you.”

            Pitch smirked. “So be it.” He resettled his chair and leaned forward. “All right, so now I know that I’m in more danger than usual. What do you want me to do?”

            “Keep your eyes open for messages from me,” Sandy said. “They won’t be conventional. But I expect they’ll be readable by you. I still—well, you know that. And I don’t want anything to happen to you. And if I have my say, it won’t. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, and keep you ahead of the militia and light adepts.”

            “I’ll get your messages.” Pitch stood and adjusted his long black cloak. “And I appreciate what you’re offering. But I’m glad you didn’t say it in Shining. Because you may have to choose.”

            Sandy stood as well, their eyes meeting once more. “What a day that would be.”

            “Stars, Sandy. I think you are already a monster of light. Your eyes—well. Goodbye. I ought to be going before I do anything to make this situation a whole lot worse.”

 

            A week passed, and Sandy heard no more of any plans to arrest Pitch, though he kept a more watchful eye and ear than ever before on the happenings at Fountain Square. He spent so much time there that the king asked him what he was doing, and he had answered, vaguely yet honestly enough, that he was endeavoring to solve the problem of Pitch Black the shadow adept. After giving this answer, however, he wondered if he would not have done better to keep his own counsel. He had not liked the shrewd and wary look the king had given him after what he had said.

            At the end of that week, though, he was somewhat distracted from these thoughts by the arrival of a group of visitors from the Luminous Academy. Included in the group were half a dozen masters who did not teach and therefore he did not know very well, one young master just initiated this past summer whose name Sandy could not recall though he had of course been present at the Solstice Welcome and had even been at school with her, and Master Phosphrae. He was glad to see her, for ever since she had led him to Kozzy after the whipping he had counted her as a friend, someone who was willing to see the problems in the light adepts’ system. On his occasional visits to the Academy he always made a point of talking with her, though to Sandy’s frustration she most often shied away from weighty topics.

            He was at Fountain Square the afternoon when she and the others arrived, and was invited to take tea with them.

            While Sandy, the visitors, various city light adepts, and the Counselor of Light drank their tea from simple china cups, Sandy could not help noticing that the atmosphere seemed tenser than any he had ever experienced among a group of light adepts. Despite this tension, however, the conversation remained inconsequential, even devolving at one point to a discussion of the weather.

            Sandy looked over to Phosphrae, hoping to catch her eye. He did so only for an instant before she looked down to her lap with a timidity he thought she had lost over the past few years. He was about to make his excuses and leave—maybe go talk to the drivers of the carriages the group had arrived in, for surely they would not be so circumspect regarding the purpose of this visit if they knew it—when he noticed Phosphrae fidgeting with the edge of her white master’s robe, and then suddenly noticed a great many more things.

            Phosphrae was the only master dressed in the normal garb of the Academy, while the others were dressed much more like Sandy, as fashionably for the city as money could buy. What’s more (and he could only assume that his time among non-adepts kept this fact from striking him immediately) they were not dressed in the usual whites, yellows, golds, oranges, and browns that light adepts tended to favor. Even at his most dandyish, Sandy did not stray from this color scheme too greatly, yet these light adepts, coming straight from the Academy, were wearing every color of the rainbow. They looked uncomfortable in these clothes as well, which argued for their newness. But why were they dressed that way, and perhaps more importantly, why was Phosphrae _not_ dressed that way?

            He noticed too, that the visitors and the Counselor of Light all seemed to be acting particularly deferential to one of the adepts from the Academy, even though, as far as Sandy knew, the Counselor technically held the highest rank of those present. The adept mysteriously commanding this respect was a man, tall, trim, and with a heavy, square face. His golden hair was cropped short and his clothes were deep burgundy. Sandy guessed he was in his mid-thirties. He had been introduced, of course, and Sandy watched him as discreetly as he could while trying to recall his name.

            Magnes! That was it. A curious name, but not nearly as curious as the behavior of the others around him. Allowing himself not to know better, Sandy grew sure that the behavior of those who were treating him so respectfully was also colored by fear, though they tried to hide it. When he saw Phosphrae, in an unguarded moment, send him a look of utter loathing, Sandy knew he had to talk with her as soon as possible.

            “Pardon me, Master Phosphrae, but you do not seem quite well to me,” he said softly. “Would you care to take a drink from the Fountain with me?”

            “Yes, Master Sandren, I do believe the fresh air and water would do me good.”

            The others did not seem to care that they were leaving, but Phosphrae’s back was rigid until they had left the house.

            “Oh, Sandy,” she said, sinking down onto the edge of the fountain and covering her mouth with her hand. “The Academy—no, not the Academy, persons, but I do not know who; I never cared about the hierarchy but I suppose I should have—they are trying something that has never been done before and I do not think should have even been thought of. It is a stain, Sandy. A stain worse than the one they hope to eliminate.”

            “Phosphrae.” Sandy took her hands in his. “If I was to guess what this stain was, do you think I would be right?”

            She nodded. “I have not had a chance to talk to you since he—came back to the city, and I do not know your feelings about what he has become, but as the man who washed his wounds, I thought you would want to know…”

            Sandy handed her a dipper of water. “I feel as I must.”

            She smiled. “What a glorious answer. It tells me nothing and yet I am sure you speak the truth.”

            “I’m sorry, Phosphrae. Perhaps you can gain some meaning from my circumspection?”

            Passing the dipper back to him, she nodded once more. “I will tell you several things now, Sandy.

            “The purpose of this delegation is to find Pitch Black. The other seven people in the group are the most powerful adepts at the Academy can spare. At least, that is what I have been given to understand. I do not think it is power that formed the group, but I have seen the young adept, Master Luci, at work, and she is quite skilled. I argued my way into the group based on my friendship with you. I promised to speak with you about the situation, to persuade you to join the search party, and to make you understand what needed to be done, even though Pitch Black was formerly your mentee.

            “Many assume that you will be easy to persuade, and that you of all people will bear the most hate towards the man who killed Kozmotis, as they put it.”

            “What,” Sandy’s heart had risen to his throat, “What ‘needs to be done’? What can they do?”

            “By some measures Pitch Black is still subject to light and its Mercy,” Phosphrae’s voice fell to a whisper. “They—and again I do not know exactly who—did a working to authorize Magnes as the wielder of the Mercy.”

            “They brought the Rays of the Sun to the city?” Sandy said flatly. “I will destroy it myself.”

            “No. Worse than that.” Phosphrae chewed on her bottom lip. “With the working…Magnes _is_ the Rays of the Sun. He can do anything and everything—through magic, not through a physical object—to Pitch Black. He has promised not to stop until Light stops him.”

            “How—why—is it possible the working failed? What does he think he will do? Why him? Did he volunteer? What is the end goal?” Sandy felt sick, and must have looked it, for Phosphrae reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder.

            “I don’t know how. It doesn’t seem right to me. Magnes seems to think the working was successful, but maybe he won’t be able to do anything. The end goal…the people in the Academy who came up with this idea want Pitch Black either returned to light, dead, or banished.”

            “ _Returned to light_? They’re mad! After all this?”

            “Light does not make mistakes. It can have no traitors, no failures.”

            “But does Magnes think he will kill him?” Sandy struggled to keep his voice down. “How could he call himself a light adept after that?”

            “Magnes and the others hate the idea of the traitor. They hate Pitch Black. Whatever is done to him is justified in their eyes. And they will do anything. That is why they’re in city clothes. They’re going to talk to the king in a few days to request and receive free reign of the city. You’re meant to arrange that.”

            “As I must.” Sandy spoke through gritted teeth.

            “Sandy, we both know this is wrong. This is not how Light should address Shadow. That’s why I came here. So someone you could trust could tell you what’s going on.”

            “Is there anything else I should know about Magnes?” Sandy asked.

            “Yes…and this is something even I am not supposed to know,” Phosphrae said. “He volunteered to be the instrument of the Mercy because he has been the instrument of the Mercy before. He thinks he will be able to punish Pitch Black for being a traitor because he has punished him before. Sandy…Magnes was the one who wielded the Rays of the Sun four years ago.”

 

            At first, Pitch thought he was dreaming the swarms of golden butterflies that floated through his cramped rooms. After all, his windows were closed, and it was not their season. But as he watched their flight he realized that if he was dreaming he was dreaming true, and a message was being spelled out for him, clear as ink on new paper. When it was over and the butterflies vanished, he smiled a wide smile, such as never would have fit on Kozzy’s face.

 

            The wavering flight of the black butterfly Sandy found in his airy rooms the next evening before the moon rose was hard to decipher, but as it flapped its hand sized wings and alit on books and unlit lamps, he realized it was trying to communicate a very conventional saying: “Revenge is a task unworthy of a light adept.”

            “So it is,” Sandy murmured, gathering the lights for the king’s dream that night. “So it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Magnes realize that Pitch isn't all bad and be forced to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Serene? NOPE.
> 
> And oh yeah, all the different adepts have wildly different educational systems. The Light Adepts are surprisingly stringent compared to the others.


	8. A Cup of Solstice Light/The Manhunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The manhunt for Pitch Black begins. Sandy does what he can to mitigate the damage. In doing so, he begins his long career in doing things that are supposedly impossible for light adepts.
> 
> Pitch agrees to confront Magnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any inconsistencies, but not for the giant flashback. There's going to be one more chapter of it.

Sandy arrived at Fountain Square a little before noon the day after he had seen the black butterfly, bringing news that the king would speak with the visitors from the Academy. He was commended for his quick work, and invited to join the noon chorus and light-gathering. In the back garden of the house, Sandy made sure to stand next to Phosphrae, hoping he would have a moment to talk to her later about what exactly was going to happen. Fortunately, she was an alto and he was a tenor, so there was nothing out of the ordinary in this arrangement.

Master Rora informed them all from her place at the head of the circle that they would begin their gathering of noon light today with the Origin Tones.

            Sandy raised his eyebrows. The Origin Tones were always appropriate, of course, but, being wordless and very ancient, they were far more difficult to sing than nearly any of the other songs used to focus a group of adepts for gathering light. While learning them as a student, he had even composed his own light-gathering song complaining of their difficulty and arguing that while other songs asked their singers to become harmonious, the Origin Tones required them to be practically bonded beforehand.

            Rora gave the initial note then, however, so he took a deep breath and pushed his objections aside. He would have to just try avoid looking at Magnes and hope for the best.

 

            When they finished singing the Tones, Sandy couldn’t help but notice that the bottles for the sunlight filled only sluggishly. At noon, even second-year apprentices could gather sunlight faster than this, and here everyone in the circle was a master! By the time the bottles were filled, no one looked happy, and Magnes looked downright furious.

            “It is clear that the situation is worse than we thought,” he said, in a tone not to be questioned. “It is well that the king will be giving us our charter tomorrow.” He strode off, followed by the other visitors, Rora, and a few others who had been part of the noon gathering, leaving Sandy and Phosphrae to collect the bottles.

            “Was he implying that the presence of Pitch Black had something to do with this gathering being the worst I’ve seen in years?” Sandy whispered to Phosphrae, making a show of stoppering the bottles exactly correctly to stall for time.

            “Of course,” Phosphrae whispered back. “All light is harmonious. Never mind that we sang the Origin Tones today because Rora and the other visiting masters couldn’t agree on any of the songs with words.”

            “Sun and Moon. That’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard for singing the Origin Tones. No wonder it went so poorly.”

            “I don’t think anything would have helped,” Phosphrae said as they made their way down into the light cellars. “What with last night. Magnes’ mood is just getting worse and worse. He doesn’t want to become harmonious with anyone. He wants them to become harmonious with him. After he talks to the king tomorrow…”

            “What happened last night? What is he going to do? Is it something I can mitigate?”

            Phosphrae glanced sideways at Sandy as they emerged into the light again. “Magnes’ sleep—and to a lesser extent, the sleep of all of us staying at Fountain Square—was troubled by nightmares.”

            “Indeed.” Sandy didn’t look at her as he picked up more bottles.

            “Manges woke screaming as if every Silent Hound of the Sunless Land was tearing him apart.”

            “I have heard it said that most light adepts have a gift for prophecy.”

            “Sandren!”

            He looked up at her, his expression carefully calm.

            “Stars, you’re terrifying. But Sandy, no, we all know that there’s only one shadow adept that can create nightmares. And they were focused on Magnes. He’s…beginning to take this very personally. When the king approves his request, he’s going to start going through the city with all the revelatory power he has. And he’s not going to be careful. Nothing will be hidden before him.”

            “Nothing? He’s going to find a lot more than Pitch Black, being so indiscriminate.”

            “He won’t care.”

            “But the people will! By the sweaty solstice Sun! Turning over everyone’s secrets? With no warning? It’ll be chaos!”

            Phosphrae sighed, her face looking older than it should have in the shifting lights of the cellar. “As Magnes would say, the true servant of light hates all secrets. Pitch Black will be found, and the city will be purified. There is no downside.”

 

            The search began in Frigoris, an old, cramped neighborhood home to mostly newcomers to the city, young scholars, and elderly people who hadn’t been able or willing to move when the first two groups started settling there. Generally, it smelled of good foreign and poor domestic cooking, and was full of the sound of children playing more or less dangerous games, scholars yelling research questions to each other over the narrow spaces between houses, and the odd interjection of breaking glass, for punctuation, when the night reached the point where wine bottles could no longer be tossed with any great accuracy.  Most of the walls needed replacing, and all of them needed a good scrub. Few, if any, would ever get either of these things.

            When Sandy had heard this was the starting point of Magnes’ search, he let himself relax slightly. While he did not know exactly where Pitch lived, he was pretty sure it wasn’t noisy Frigoris. The king had recommended the starting point simply because of its economic status and reputation as a place somewhat lax in its observation of certain of the kingdom’s laws. Whatever the light adepts did there—and Sandy was sure the king didn’t understand exactly what was going to be done, even after it had been explained to him—it would not affect the king much.

            _But how much will it affect Frigoris?_ wondered Sandy. No matter how foul of a mood Magnes was in—for Phosphrae had told Sandy that his nightmares had only gotten worse, while the others in the house had stopped having them—as a light adept his actions could not do direct harm. But Sandy was all too aware that what light defined as harm was disturbingly protean.

            Sandy went about his ordinary morning duties at the palace that first day of the search, sparing some time to work on crafting another means of sending a message to Pitch. In the early afternoon, he left for Fountain Square, intending to mix himself a strengthening draught of light and wait for the search party to return.

            He had just decided that summer solstice light would indeed be necessary for the days to come, and was trying to figure out the proper proportion to use when only one person would be drinking, when a frantic pounding at the door seized his attention.

            In the nearly empty house, he was the one nearest the door, so he set down his lights on the large, polished wooden table in the main mixing room and hurried out into the main entryway to see what was the matter. When he opened the door he saw standing before him a skinny young man, his rather poor clothes sticking to him with sweat, gasping for breath. Upon seeing Sandy he sighed in relief as best he could.

            “Master Light Adept,” he said, “I’m sorry for showing up here, like this, but—we need help down in Frigoris. And—I don’t know if you can help, since it’s your people, but maybe you could explain? And—you’re Master Sandren, aren’t you? I’ve seen you at festivals.”

            “ Yes, that’s me. Come in, come in, I’ll get you a drink of water.” Sandy gestured to the boy, a worried frown appearing on his face as soon as he turned toward the kitchen where the pump was.

 

            Much restored after a cool drink of water with just a few drops of midmorning light mixed into it—Sandy knew he wasn’t strictly following protocol when he did that, but he didn’t really care—the young man tried again to describe what was happening in Frigoris.

            “Now I get dreams like everybody else, I suppose,” he said, “but this wasn’t like that at all. They were doing it all down the street before they got to my house—and I—I didn’t wait around to see what would happen if I was in their way. I saw them, the light adepts, go in all one group from one house to the next. And they would stand in front of the house and the light adept in front, a tall man, would start to lead this chant. And that was over soon enough, and then there would be this flash of light, and sometimes weird things would happen. One house, all the paint fell off the outside walls and there was some real bad graffiti underneath. And then, this is what my sister and I saw that had her send me running to you: The houses where the light adepts had chanted, well, it happened a lot that a lot of yelling and screaming would start, and as I was running here I saw more than a few people starting to fight in the street.

            “That’s not like dreams, Master Sandren. What’s happening? What are they trying to do? Why aren’t you with them?”

            “What’s happening is that they are trying to force the shadow adept Pitch Black out of hiding.” Sandy stood at the table and began to prepare the final mixture of light for his strengthening draught. It looked like he was going to be needing a much higher proportion of summer solstice light than he had anticipated. “Have you heard of him? You need not answer. The light adepts have decided that he is a threat.” He frowned to see his hands shake slightly as he measured out the pure brilliance of the solstice. “What they are doing is really rather simple. The chants you heard and the flashes of light you saw are a working that compels everyone and everything in its range of influence to give up its secrets. They have to work as a group to make sure they have enough power to open an entire house, quickly.

            “I am not with them because I had other duties.” _And because I was a fool who thought abstaining from this working was meaningful in some way, even though I knew how bad it might become for those in its path._

            The young man clutched at the glass he was holding. “So what they’re doing…means that no one on my street has any secrets anymore? But…”

            “The light adepts only care about finding Pitch Black,” Sandy said, knowing that this was unlikely to be reassuring.

            “Yeah, but the militia—”

            “What about the militia?” Sandy asked sharply, pausing in mixing his cup of light.

            “The light adepts have a guard with them. More militia than light adepts. I guess to keep them safe from the shadow adept? Because they can’t fight, I know that much. But the militia care an awful lot about some things that usually slide by in Frigoris…we don’t hurt anyone, I swear…”

            Sandy had to remind himself not to grip the stem of his glass too tightly, lest it break. “Young man, I know you speak the truth. Give me a moment to drink this light, and we will take one of the house carriages to Frigoris immediately.”

            The boy nodded, a glint of curiosity and eagerness edging out the fear in his eyes now, and Sandy wondered for a moment if he had ever ridden in a carriage in all his life, before recalling the words and melody of a preparation sequence as clearly as he could and tipping the glass of light into his mouth.

            The tide of well-being that seemed to flow from his heart to suffuse his limbs felt equal in intensity to that which he had experienced when he drank pure solstice light at his initiation. He wasn’t sure why such a return to joy had been granted him, under such rushed, and certainly not ideal, conditions, but he accepted it gladly. The light sang in him again, just as it had when he became a master, and, as he now understood, just as it had sung in him when he had rushed to Kozzy’s side. As the last drops passed his lips, he became perfectly confident that whatever he did today would serve light as it was meant to be served.

            When he opened his eyes, the young man let out a small gasp. “Your eyes,” he said, “are they meant to glow like that?”

            “Today?” Sandy offered him a smile. “Yes, I am sure they are.”

 

            Crowds of people out on the roadways forced the carriage to stop while it was still several streets away from the generally understood boundaries of Frigoris.

            “We can’t be safe here,” Remi, the young man, said. “This carriage obviously belongs to the light adepts, and,” he looked nervously over at Sandy, the glow of his irises even more noticeable in the somewhat dim interior of the vehicle, “nothing good has been coming from them today.”

            Yet despite Remi’s worries, the crowd’s movements had slowed as more and more people had noticed the carriage, and Sandy saw the expressions of many faces change from anger to worry, curiosity, and even hope as they looked towards them. “Remi, you may be right,” Sandy said, unlatching the door, “but I expect that instead you are about to witness just how influential light adepts are in this city. I leave it to you to determine whether or not this is right.”

            Before Sandy opened the door, Remi reached out and put his hand on Sandy’s arm. “Master Sandren. You’ve been a lot different than what I expected, but please, remember,” he said, glancing up and down at Sandy’s fine clothes, “this isn’t a part of the city you’re used to.”

            “For better or for worse, I do not think that will matter,” Sandy said, and pushed open the door, flipping the hinged steps out to meet the pavement. He stepped out, though as soon as he did, he wasn’t sure if he had made the right choice. There seemed to be more people out in the street now that he wasn’t in the carriage, and most of them were significantly taller than him.

            Then, he heard Remi get out of the carriage to stand behind him, and knew he had to push the fear from his mind at once. He took a deep breath, turned to Remi and put his hand lightly on his elbow to reassure him. This was not really such a dire situation. Nothing had happened yet, and he had just drunk a full cup of solstice light. His eyes were aglow, and while he was not yet certain what that meant, he did not feel like it was anything in disharmony with his true self. He went over to the carriage driver and told him to go back to Fountain Square and returned to Remi’s side as their way back clattered away down the street.

            “If you need to go, go. If you need to stay, stay,” Sandy said to him, just barely audible over the murmuring of the crowd. “Light will not hurt you, but I do not know what else in your life might. And I admit I am not entirely sure what is going to happen next.”

            “I’ll stay,” whispered Remi. “But what do you mean?”

            “I’m going to try something new,” Sandy answered. “And I’m going to try it alone.” And that wasn’t the sort of thing light adepts did at all. He called the Origin Tones to mind again—nothing else seemed right, and it was strangely easy to do so. He took a breath and raised his hands slightly away from his sides, while looking out over the crowd. Yes. He could do this. He could do anything. Something he had always unconsciously suspected about light had precipitated into his mind as he had drunk the solstice light earlier, and solidified into one solid, sharp crystal of thought on the way to Frigoris. Light magic revealed. But this did not limit what Light could do. Instead, it merely guided the way light adepts had to think to use it. As long as he did no harm, the power of light was unlimited. He simply had to figure out how to understand the revelatory nature of whatever he chose to do.

            And now he was going to reveal, without words, and all at once, that he was there to help Frigoris.

            A faint shimmering ripple spread from him out through the crowd, and he saw the people begin to fall silent, to smile, to leave the gathering, and Sandy hoped, go back to their homes.

            He turned to Remi and saw the boy blink, confused. “But I know you’re here to help,” he muttered. “How…but you said the others needed that whole group to magic one house. You’re doing this whole packed street at once…”

            Sandy did feel uneasy about that, but there was no time for debate now. “Yes, Remi. And I don’t think I can sustain it.” Oh, but he could. But the effect must just be a result of drinking the solstice light. It must. That must be why it was usually rationed. It couldn’t be him, could it? “Come with me.”

            He walked forward, Remi behind him, through the crowd that parted before them and closed behind them. As they made their way into Frigoris, Remi looked out and around at the sea of bodies, the mob that wasn’t, and folded his arms, as if to avoid touching the newly calmed people. This wasn’t necessary. Absolutely everyone stayed at least two arm-lengths away from them, though Remi noticed that they also all leaned a little towards Master Sandren, as if they were sunflowers and he was the sun. And he was doing it too.

            “I don’t think I’ve ever seen real magic before,” he said softly, to himself.

            “You just haven’t seen the brute force of it,” Sandy answered quietly. The other light adepts were going to hear of this. He wondered what they would say. Would he be reprimanded? People feared power, even if it could not be used to hurt them. Ordinarily, light magic was kept safe in tinctures and songs and dreams. Now, though, he supposed he was revealing it as the terrific force it truly was.

            Revealing? In that case, they should be able to say nothing to him. Still, as he and Remi emerged onto the streets of Frigoris, the thinned crowd filling the bubble of space they had been walking in, he suspected that he had started to change the city just as much as Pitch Black or Magnes’ search for him had.

            At that moment, however, he couldn’t spend any time thinking of the larger implications of what he had chosen to do. Frigoris stood in dire distress. The very cobblestones of the street looked destabilized, lost worms creeping up through the cracks and beginning to bake in the sun. Many houses had lost paint in patches, the bared spaces revealing writing or drawings more or less crude. He saw in many cases people trying to fix shutters and doors that had been forcefully thrown open, and as he followed the street, dozens of other indiscriminate revelations presented themselves to his gaze.

            Diaries had burst, vomiting pages into the streets at Magnes’ command. A chimney had collapsed, leaving the residents of the house to face with disgust the desiccated body of a dog, somehow mummified within. Nearly all the tables of a small café had overturned, showing all the names scrawled on the undersides of the furniture, most punctuated with obscure symbols whose meaning still burned in the air thanks to the working of the search party. An old woman gathered lacy underclothes from where they had been scattered on her stoop, her expression stony.

            Those who were in the streets alone glared at Sandy, and he couldn’t blame them. But far worse than the accusing looks from individuals were the things he heard from those who were not alone, and utterly ignoring him in favor of far more pressing business.

            All through the streets, raised voices could be heard arguing, and the fragments Sandy heard made it clear that the minds of the people held the true wreckage that the search party had left behind.

           

“You said it didn’t matter!”

            “That was because I thought you’d never do it!”

           

“Get out of my house!”

           

“If that’s where you want to be, then go!”

           

“I thought I could trust you!”

 

            “We could have done something! Now it’s too late!”

 

            Remi frowned. “I’m glad I wasn’t at my house when they did the magic to it. I only hope it wasn’t too bad for my parents and sister. We all love each other, but…”

            Sandy nodded. “Everyone has secrets.” Sighing, he guided Remi away from a cloud of pungent smoke drifting from a formerly enclosed garden. Militia members surrounded the crude hole in the wall. “Or at least things they do not tell everyone.” Did Magnes think that what he was doing was less harmful than Pitch’s presence? The city, or at least the people in it who were not close to the light adepts, had been getting used to Pitch, or so he had thought. They couldn’t get used to this. And even Magnes did not introduce himself as the one who had wielded the Rays of the Sun.

            “But what can you do?” Remi asked. “You’re only one light adept, and you said they needed the group I saw to only magic one house—and still, what is to be done? Can you make everyone forget what they know? Can you make the secrets go back?”

            “No,” Sandy said, “I can’t make them forget, and I can’t make the secrets become secrets once more. If that is something light can do, it would take me a very long time to figure out how. But I will try to bring to light other things in their minds. I will try to make them remember why they loved those they now know so much more about. To illuminate paths of forgiveness. To show them ways of seeing the true insignificance of what now seem to them great crimes.”

            “Just you. Doing all that?”

            “I may not be successful in what I try.” Sandy smiled at Remi to reassure him, but the boy’s eyes immediately fixed on Sandy’s glowing gold ones and he understood that however he acted today, reassurance was not going to be the reaction of the witnesses. “Remi, you know these streets. Lead me through them. I’m going to need to concentrate.”

 

            That day, the citizens of Frigoris saw one of their gangly local boys walking through every street and alley, followed by a short, well-fed light adept, whose fine clothes were nearly obscured by the shifting nimbus of light that drifted out from him like brilliant fog. Everything in the neighborhood—and everyone, too—seemed to be touched by that light, even those that tried to hide from it, remembering the events from the morning. Many of those who were close enough to see the light adept’s face said that his eyes glowed brighter than the sun as he travelled through the streets. Stranger than his appearance by far, however, was the sense of calm that followed his light, making the earlier turbulence seem somehow far away, or long ago.

            It was unlike anything anyone there had ever experienced, and none would forget it—just as they realized they would not forget what had been revealed earlier.

            The new peace of Frigoris overlaid a deep foundation of knowledge that previously been hidden. Master Sandren (for the name of the lone light adept was soon passed about the neighborhood like a rare and curious gem) may have stanched the bleeding that day, but in healing it he had not undone the changes wrought by the others.

 

            Sandy was and would be forever grateful that the search party had limited themselves to only one neighborhood that day. By the time Remi led him down the last street, he had needed to lean on the boy’s shoulder for support. With each dragging step he had begun to worry more and more that the strength he had gained from the solstice light had run out miles ago, and that he was now calming Frigoris with his own life force.

            At the end of the working—so great a success, yet improvised! Done alone! Nakedly displaying power! An answer would have to be made to someone—Sandy sat down on the edge of the pathway and put his head in his hands. “Remi.” His voice was faint. “Thank you.”

            “Th-thank you,” said Remi, sitting next to Sandy, hoping he didn’t sound too nervous. “I think…I think you have prevented much harm in Frigoris today.”

            “I wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise. Now, Remi, could you do one last thing for me? Hail me a cab, or a sedan chair, whatever you see first. You ran all the way to me but I can’t—I can’t walk back.”

 

            “Will I see you again?” Remi asked as he helped Sandy into the small carriage.

            “Maybe,” Sandy sighed. “I fear I will be out in the city far more than usual in the coming days.”

 

            That afternoon he did not return to Fountain Square, feeling unable to meet even Phosphrae after what he had seen in Frigoris. Had she chanted with the rest? Even had she only mouthed the words, even had she held her own magic back, how could she bear to be associated with what was being done?

            In his quarters at the palace, he poured light—something from early springtime: he did not bother to check what it was, merely choosing what was most plentiful and would not necessitate a near return to the cellars of Fountain Square—into a goblet and drained it after humming only the simplest of songs. His strength returned quickly, and though he shook his head at the ease of the remedy, he did not hesitate to begin his more urgent work. The goblet he mixed this time contained carefully calculated portions of nearly two dozen lights. The listing of even their designations in a well-organized light cellar, like that of the Academy, would have been enough to tell a story to any educated adept with an eye for detail.

            “You better remember the Meanings of the Days,” Sandy said to himself before emptying his mind of thoughts and draining the second goblet. Once every last drop had passed his lips, he sat cross-legged on the thick, soft rug in his room, rested his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and began to use the power of the light he had just consumed to spin out a working that would send a message that only one would be able to interpret. It felt like bleeding, to intermingle his own memories with the symbolic legends, yet the only sign of this was a slight tension at the corners of Sandy’s mouth.

 

            In his haste, he forgot that he had never been taught how to do this, either.

 

            “What are you doing?” Pitch hissed. “It was everywhere! I saw it in the way flowers were blooming. I saw it in the way water ran across the cobblestones. I saw it in the flights of gulls. I saw it in the way people milled about at markets. I saw it in the damned _clouds_ , Sandy!”

            “Did you hear about what happened in Frigoris? Today it was Takeo Road. Tomorrow it will be somewhere else. If I wasn’t following, the city would be burning by now!”

            “Heard? Sandy, I have heard. I have heard stories I cannot believe—”

            “And so you see why Magnes—”

            “I don’t give a fuck about Magnes. I will give him his nightmares, and gladly, but Sandy! The stories I’ve been hearing are about _you_.”

            “I’ve only been doing what I’ve had to to keep the city safe!”

            “Sandy, you have been doing things that _maybe_ the entire Academy could do, if everyone was in an especially good mood, and it was high summer.”

            “I have not.”

            “Say it another way.”

            Sandy glared at him. “ _I have_ —” He broke off into a violent coughing fit. “Fine!” He snapped. “Maybe I do know that, and that’s why I avoided everyone today. But I had to put the message everywhere, Pitch, I had to make sure you would see it, and no one else could understand it, I promise! It relied on memories only we share.”

            “Yes, I _did_ realize that.” Pitch slapped his hand against the stone wall of the well house at Broadhand corner. “So what do you want from me? Do you want me to give myself up?” His expression in the dim moonlight, was vulnerable and wide-eyed, and stopped Sandy’s answer in his throat.

            _Returned to light, killed or banished_. Just as he could have asked Kozzy to stay the last time they were here, he could ask Pitch to give himself up now, and he would. Pitch Black would give himself up for Sandren’s sake. He could not say yes, though as a light adept he should. Or at least, everything he had been taught said he should.

            “ _I want you_ ,” he said slowly, “ _to confront Magnes_.”

            Pitch blew air through his nose and looked away. “If I confront Magnes in person I risk confirming to you all your worst assumptions about shadow adepts. He—my actions would not balance the scale, I fear.”

            “I don’t care,” Sandy replied, his voice barely above a whisper. “For your sake, and the city’s…” He laughed, bitter and uneven. “Aren’t you glad, Pitch? I’ve made great strides in understanding the importance of secrets, and in just two days!”

            Pitch swore in Erebusian. “You’ve understood since your ninth year. Now let me think.” He paced back and forth in the small room, disappearing and reappearing from the shadows like a ghost. “If I continue to hide from Magnes—and this would not be difficult, since you aren’t helping him, Sandy—eventually the whole city would suffer from his light. Stars, I wonder if he has a place on his schedule for a search of the palace.”

            “I’d wager he does,” Sandy said. “And even if you’ve never lived at court, I trust you’ll believe me when I say that could literally result in wars, yes, _wars_ , plural, depending on who’s visiting at the time.”

            “And this land is home to shadow just as much as it is home to light,” Pitch said softly, before looking over at Sandy. “Or so the shadow adepts told me.” He paced faster. “Blast it! Sandy, I don’t care about the palace. But the neighborhoods I know well would be in utter shambles without your—admittedly somewhat frightening—help. I can’t let him continue. But if I am to face him—and the others—I need time. Give me a week. I’d rather wait till after the new moon, but that won’t be for another three and by then…”

            “I doubt even I could keep the chaos in check.”

            Pitch stopped pacing, and leaned against the frame that held the pulley for lowering buckets into the well. “Know that that is why I am doing this, Sandy. Not because Magnes deserves to look upon me again. Not because it is the nature of shadow to fight with light. Not because I feel I have done anything wrong. I will face Magnes for the sake of the city. To calm it, and make it safe for its citizens again.

            “And yet, being rather attached to my life—and I know they have enlisted the militia, and I am under no illusions as to why—I will need the week to prepare and gather power. Also…the city is beginning to be suspicious of light adepts that aren’t you, Sandy. And they speak of you almost as if you weren’t even human anymore. If the feeling that what the light adepts are doing is unjust continues to grow, that could also destabilize the city. And so…” he captured Sandy’s eyes with his own. “Give me a week, and I will deserve their manhunt. Give me a week, and I expect you to be on the front lines of battle, looking ordinary as the others. Yes. You will stand beside them, and the people will forget your power. Forget their suspicion. When the dust settles the city will be more stable than it ever was before.”

            “This is rotten.” Sandy ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t do anything I can’t undo, Pitch. Please.”

            “I don’t think I could.” Pitch goes to the door. “See you in a week.”

 

            Upon returning to the palace, Sandy slept poorly, starting awake every few minutes. Never before had sleep fled from him so persistently, and despite his exhaustion, he was almost glad of the distraction when a frantic knocking summoned him to his door a few minutes after dawn.

            “One moment!” He splashed his face with water from the basin, realized this didn’t help his appearance much, made a disgusted face, and pulled on a dressing gown embroidered with massive golden lilies.

            To his surprise, Chretian Ys, the majordomo of the palace, was standing behind the door when he opened it. The man appeared just as exhausted as Sandy, and perhaps even more so. He swayed on his feet, and he twitched at every sound that reached the corridor.

            “What’s the trouble?” Sandy asked, and Chretian’s drooping eyelids snapped open. He worried the edge of one of his sleeves with the fingers of the other hand.

            “Master Sandren, the functioning of this palace has been compromised.” He raised a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn. “The nightmare plague has returned. And this time, the nightmares are far worse. I remember that years before they seemed aimless. Now, I at least felt they were directed towards my greatest fears. I was utterly prevented from restful sleep last night. Every single member of my staff reports the same experience. I can only assume those who have the privilege of sleeping in are having identical problems.

            “We have now a sleep-deprived, bad-tempered staff who spent the whole of last night in terror. Even now, they begin to be expected to wait upon sleep-deprived, bad-tempered people of rank who spent the whole of last night in terror. If there is anything you can do, I urge you to do it at once.”

            _Not the whole night_. “I understand. I’ll do what I can.”

            He wasted no time concocting a brew specific to the situation at the palace, but indiscriminately threw calm over all of it, hoping that would be enough to prevent any international incidents. The king was of no consequence now, and he at least had had Sandy’s personal dreamglass to protect him. More important by far was it that Sandy get to Fountain Square and discover what was happening there.

 

            After an alarming carriage ride in which a half-asleep driver piloted the vehicle through streets crowded with frightened, confused, angry, and exhausted people—Sandy was more inclined to credit their safe arrival to the stolid pair of black mares than the driver—Sandy dashed through the oddly empty square and into the house. Inside, he found only more chaos.

            “We must redouble our search efforts! Double the hours we work, double the ground that we cover. Counselor Rora, don’t you see that the traitor has just made our jobs easier? The reluctance we were beginning to see yesterday will have vanished! Now the entire city knows what he is capable of—what pain he is willing to senselessly inflict—no good person in the city could with conscience resist our methods. Now, everyone will see the necessity of the severity of our search.” In the front parlor, Magnes exhorted Rora with tight, violent gestures, while she looked up from an armchair, squinting at him and holding a cup of tea in front of her chest. Sandy hoped it served her as an effective barrier.

            Various other light adepts ran through the house, carrying full bottles of light to mixing rooms and taking empty bottles away to be filled with the dawn. A cacophony of voices sounded from the rear courtyard, and Sandy could not imagine any quality light being gathered in such disharmony.

            Even in the midst of the bustle, the adepts noted Sandy’s entrance, glancing over at him with fear, or awe, or even suspicion. None greeted him, though, and he was beginning to grow irritated when Phosphrae entered the house from the courtyard, carrying a bottle of grayish dawn.

            “Sandy!” She mouthed, rushing over to him. “They were going to look for you today if you didn’t come here. You’ve been—you’ve made them scramble for ways to make it look like you’re totally on their side. Come to the courtyard with me.”

            He followed her, grateful for some sort of normal acknowledgment, but unable to let her association with the others go. “Well, they haven’t had to work to make it seem like you’re on their side,” he said, keeping his voice low. “You were there in Frigoris. How could you? You knew it was wrong.”

            Phosphrae stopped dead in her tracks and turned to Sandy. “Sandren. Listen to me now. I worked very hard and risked a great deal to come to this city so I could warn you about what was going to happen. I had to promise to support Magnes. I haven’t been able to taste anything since I spoke my oath. If I hadn’t participated in the search, I could have lost my place at the Academy. And do you know where they would have sent me, then? My hometown, Sandy. A place whose name I do not utter for fear of its following me. Even as a light adept I will not face that pit.”

            He remembered Phosphrae as a student just a few years ahead of him then, staring nervously at plates holding leftover food. He remembered her old way of standing out of arm’s reach of anyone. He remembered one day, bringing sand to the hot shop. She had misjudged the transfer of the glass to the punty and had reached out to catch the hot glass. She had looked relieved for a moment before the pain hit her. Sun-salve had healed her hands completely, and Sandy had thought she was simply foolish, then, for reaching for the burning glass. Obviously a bit of broken glass was better than burned hands. Unless it wasn’t.

            Sandy sighed. “I’m sorry, Phosphrae. Sometimes I have a peculiar talent in not seeing things.”

            “I never put any of it on display,” Phosphrae answered. She turned back to the courtyard. “I did, I do, know that revealing all secrets of a household can be a terrible thing. What little power I added to the chants, I added with the hope that the house might be one of the few that benefitted from light shining mercilessly into its dark corners. It was an awful thing to hope.”

            Sandy nodded, and they sang a short duet before beginning to fill another empty bottle.

            “Did you return to your hometown last night?” Sandy asked softly, as the bottle began to fill.

            “No,” she answered, her voice just as soft. “When I graduated, Solana gave me a very small dreamglass for my own use. When I feel that even the great dreamglass might fail me, I fill it with a little light—even candlelight—and it keeps me safe. I’ve been using it since arriving in the city.”

            “Good.” Sandy reached for her hand. “be wary, though. There has never been another shadow adept like him.”

            “And there has never been another light adept like you.” Phosphrae squeezed his fingers. “You be wary too. They want you to be their hero.”

 

            “Master Sandren.” Magnes stepped into the hall in front of Sandy and Phosphrae, halting them in their tracks. Rora stood slightly behind him and to the left, any expression beyond tiredness in her face unreadable. “I am sure you have arrived today to lend your support to the immediate search efforts.  Your works of the previous two days, while commendable in their effects, have proved difficult to interpret, even with the help of our palace liaisons.”

            “It was not my intention to be unclear in what I was doing,” Sandy replied.

            Magnes nodded briskly. “Of course, of course. Naturally, no ill intent may be ascribed to you given the success with which your work was accomplished—”

            The memory of the great and glorious dream Kozzy had brewed before being forced to face the Mercy flashed in upon Sandy’s mind and he ground his teeth together to prevent any outbursts that would contain more truth than the current situation would bear.

            “—and while there was certainly great utility in what you did, clearing up the minor unintended consequences of our search, you should not have been working alone, not for what you did.

            “Now, the inappropriateness of your actions I see as forgivable, based on your youth; the odd position you hold as the king’s dreamweaver, living apart from other light adepts in the palace; the minor nature of the effects of your working; and the considerable emotional toll this undertaking is no doubt demanding of you.” Magnes cast Sandy a sympathetic look. “I can only imagine the rage you must feel at even the thought of Pitch Black. Has he singled you out for nightmares as well? Before his most recent attack on the whole city, I mean.”

            “No,” Sandy said, scrambling for a suitable elaboration. “When Kozmotis left the Luminous Academy, he left my ministrations and our systems behind him. I can imagine no reason for Pitch Black to seek out one who was merely his mentor.”

            “Indeed. Well, Sandren, I have a proposition for you. You may not have realized it, but you have been doing some workings of great power recently, and in my opinion your talents are being wasted mixing the king’s dreams. I believe you should ask the king for time away from him to join the search for Pitch Black, and join your powers to ours. With your help, I am sure we could find the traitor within a few days. And perhaps, with you with us, he might be more inclined to return to light if he saw his old mentor among those searching for him. The only higher persuasion might be an adept he hoped to bond to.

            “I understand if you do not want to give him a chance to return to light—after last night I find it difficult to conceive of such an outcome—but for the sake of that light, set aside your anger and help us find Kozmotis or stop Pitch Black. And do not fear. He will be properly punished.”

            _I’m not the only light adept with a talent for not seeing things_ , Sandy thought. “Master Magnes,” he began, knowing he would attribute any oddities in his tone to his supposed anger at Pitch, “If I join you in the search, who will do what I’ve been doing after you left?”

            “At this point, with the nightmares spreading, that is of no—” Rora stepped forward and gestured for Magnes to approach her.

            The general bustle of Fountain Square did not quite conceal everything the Counselor told Magnes. “…services rendered to the king do not balance…more complaints…as the search widens…integrating his power?...we can still double the search.”

            Magnes turned back to Sandy, irritation plain on his face, though at what or who Sandy couldn’t say for sure.

            “Counselor Rora has advised me that, though indirect, your workings have been indispensable to the continuation of our search.”

            “Thank you, Counselor Rora.” Sandy bowed to her slightly, then looked back up at Magnes. “If I may, I will carry on with them then. However, I have taken your earlier words to heart, and I realize now that I shouldn’t have been working alone.”

            Magnes nodded.

            “I would like to request a light adept to work with me.”

            “That is quite correct, name them.”

            “Master Phosphrae.”

            “Sandy!” She exclaimed. He met her eyes in a plea for silence before looking back at Magnes.

            “Yes, very well, take her.” Magnes frowned. “But her aid may not amount to much.”

            “Harmony of mind is all that is required for aid to amount to much,” Sandy said. He bowed shallowly to end the conversation, took Phosphrae’s hand, and led her away.

 

            “He was right, though,” she said, sitting on the edge of the Great Moon Fountain. “I can’t learn to do what you’ve been doing.”

            “That’s quite all right.” Sandy smiled. “After all, I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. But now you at least don’t have to be part of that bludgeoning they’re using light for.”

            “Thank you.”

            “And, Phosphrae…as we move throughout the city…I believe it will be good to have someone so skilled in fighting nightmares at my side.”

 

            And so began what was later called the Unreal Week. For two days, everything proceeded as both light adept and shadow adept expected. On the third, Magnes and his searchers flushed out a shadow adept named Umbra. The militia arrested her, and the nightmare-addled population called for her blood instead of her banishment.

            Her short trial left her facing the gallows in Nameless Courtyard. The execution was set for the same day on which Pitch had promised to face Magnes.

            The two who knew both these things found themselves exiled from any sleep, any dreams, as the day sped closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd have something to say at the end, but instead I'm just really excited to start working on the next part.


	9. The Wall of Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle between the Dreamweaver and the Nightmare King. It's not exactly like any histories have recorded it. Pitch and Sandy do their best to remember each other.
> 
> This massive flashback ends and we return to the Great Library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can bet all your money that if this ever appears in an altered, dead-tree version someday, they will not let me put a giant flashback in the middle of it.

            Later, it would be called the Unreal Week. Whoever coined this term must have been born long after the events of that Autumn, for all those who lived through it called it the Nightmare War. Or the Dream War. No amount of effort on the part of the light adepts could force them to refine their terms.

            Then again, perhaps their terms were already refined.

 

            The nightmares of the populace grew worse, and eventually no influence of the great dreamglass at the Luminous Academy could be felt. This alarming circumstance swiftly overshadowed any concerns that had been growing regarding Sandy’s abilities, though it was difficult for him to feel grateful when he saw drawn, tense faces all around him.

            The light adepts of the city took what counteractive measures they could, but with twice as many now wearied by the search efforts, and the limited number and range of dreamglasses available for use, they produced little peace. The dreams they brewed contradicted each other and blended with the nightmares to produce ambiguous chimeras and protean enigmas, that, if they did not exactly terrify, offered only the uneasy comfort of riddles content to remain riddles.

            And yet, through it all, the king remained safe, for he forbade Sandy from joining in the general efforts, and ordered him to only weave his dreams. And Sandy obeyed, for the city had to sicken before it could be cured.

            Still, if the king’s nights were untroubled, his days roiled. Faction upon faction, both popular and elite, demanded that he do something. Neither king nor factions were willing to admit that the forces clashing in the minds of the city had nothing to do with their particular political concerns. Thus, in the face of such pressures, when the shadow adept Umbra was brought to trial, he signed the order for her execution with perhaps more of a flourish than could be considered appropriately grave.

 

            Sandy sat at his dressing table just before dawn on the morning of the execution. His head, resting in his hands, felt as though it was made out of solid lead. His eyes were dry in their sockets, and he resisted rubbing them only because it had not done any good on any of the previous mornings. His skin felt vaguely clammy, and even though he had been washing, he could not seem to get the last bit of grease out of his hair and off of his face. The last time he was sure he had slept was the night the nightmares started.

            And yet, despite his exhaustion, he was not at all _sleepy_. He didn’t know whether his state was of his own doing, Pitch’s, or the general atmosphere of the city itself. All he could do was hope it would be over soon.

            Well, hope, and try to prepare for whatever would happen in Nameless Courtyard in a few hours. He lifted his head from his hands, dipped his washcloth in the basin, and began to scrub his face with cold water.

            While dressing, he wanted to wear simple robes, such as Phosphrae would be wearing, but those clothes were too different from his ordinary attire. Clothes said something, no matter how much the moralists wailed, and he couldn’t change his tone too much, not on such a tense day. Belatedly, he realized also that while facing Pitch today, he might not want to appear in the costume of the Light Academy. He settled on a fairly simply cut fawn-colored ensemble, and then put on a wide-skirted, wide-sleeved, ankle length coat in dully shining gold over it. Unpatterned, the fabric was not too ostentatious, and yet he was well aware that it would not allow him to hide.

            So be it. He trusted that at least his actions today would be watchable.

            He left his hair to fall in loose golden curls over his shoulders, a concession to Luminous Academy simplicity and memory.

            Finally, he went to the lacquered cabinet in his workroom and unlocked it to retrieve the last of the bottles of solstice light he had been sharing with Phosphrae during the past week. Today, she must to procure her own from the cellars, for he would need all of this.

            He opened the window to let in the first rosy rays of dawn, sitting on the floor so that they fell directly onto his face and eyes. As he began to sing his part of the Origin Tones for dawn, he realized that the notes he was hitting were not quite the same as the ones he was expecting to, based on long practice. Instead, the melody that issued from his throat flowed with a sound almost like to that of the Origin Tones when they were sung as they were meant to be, in a group. Almost like. Not exactly. There were no harmonies, of course, and the intervals between one note and the next seemed far more comfortable than those of the Tones he had learned.

            Whatever he was singing, it felt as if he was drinking light already.

            Upon completing his preparations, he gazed steadily at the carmine of the early sun and, just as steadily, drank the entire bottle of solstice light.

            It should have made him light-drunk, ready to laugh and dance with the sheer joy of being. But light was truthful when it was allowed to be, and all the joy in him that morning formed a still, silent pool in his heart around one thought: You can now shape the world as you will.

            It was a terrifying thought, yet true enough, since it came from light. Sandy was gladdened only by the split shades of meaning that allowed him to say: I will not shape the world as I will.

            _And why not?_ He imagined Pitch asking.

            _Because I do not want to deserve the fear of others_ , he imagined himself replying.

 

            At five minutes to nine, Nameless Courtyard hummed with the uneasy mutterings of a mob beginning to question its rule. The sky above was blue like an eye made of ice and seemed to call for the cry of a hawk. Yet all that clattered across its dome was the cawing of crows from the surrounding rooftops.

            The flags on the king’s pavilion hung limp and meaningless in the cool, sharp, air of a Hazen morning. Sandy knew the stillness wouldn’t last. How could it, with what was about to happen? _No, life doesn’t work like that_ , he thought to himself, even as the magic under his skin sang back, _yes it does yes it does_.

            He clenched his fists in the sleeves of his robes. Standing next to Phosphrae, he took the rightmost place at a long line of light adepts that included Magnes and the other visitors, as well as Rora and more city light adepts than he expected to see. Surely they realized that the Nightmare War had little to do with this Umbra? Why were they appearing to show support for an execution? Of all things, this was not the light adept way. _Perhaps they show their faces here because you do,_ whispered a thought he refused to address.

From their position along the wide, six-foot-high wall that surrounded the square, Sandy and the other light adepts had a clear view of Umbra, already on the scaffold. She possessed the coloring typical of shadow adepts, and the black of her long hair in two thick braids against the grayish whiteness of her face made her look like an ink sketch inserted into an oil painting. For a moment the contrast of her appearance with her surroundings sent Sandy’s mind into the vertigo of unreality before the rusty fading of her black skirts pulled him back to the present. Of only average height, her calm demeanor made her appear taller.

            As the executioner in his brick-red hood tied a rope around her skirts, Sandy dug his nails into his palms. He wanted her to struggle, to scream, to do anything, say anything. He wanted her to rage, to tell everyone that this was wrong. He wanted to tell her that if she said nothing, some would always think this was just. Some might think this should be done again.

            Phosphrae touched his arm lightly with the back of her hand. “Sandy,” she whispered, her lips barely moving, “look at the crowd. Something about it…maybe you can see something.”

            Reluctantly taking his eyes from Umbra, Sandy scanned the crowd, forcing himself to really look at the people there, trying not to shy away from any goulishness, real or imagined. He watched them directly, he watched them out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ripples of their movements align with certain windows, certain stains on the walls. He couldn’t read anything there. There was nothing to read. Even—even death was absent.

            He glanced up at Phosphrae, and then at the executioner fitting the noose around Umbra’s neck. “She’s not going to be executed,” Sandy whispered to her. “Be ready.”

            Standing before the king and slightly to the right and overlooking the line of light adepts and the crowd, the judge who had given Umbra her sentence began to read out the list of crimes for which she had been condemned in a loud voice so everyone could hear, and at last uttered the fatal words, “…and, as his Radiance the King so wills it, you shall be hanged by the neck until dead.”

            Something, something was going to happen. It was going to happen between one heartbeat and the next, and Sandy willed his to stay steady as the seconds passed. Something was going to happen and he would need to be ready. Yet all the songs, all the symbols, even all the words of Shining seemed to have been erased from his mind like footsteps on the ocean shore. Even the form of the light-knot felt impossibly far away. Instead, vast and undefined shapes of golden light loomed heavy in his mind, awaiting, and accepting, no other form of guidance than his will. Well, so they must serve.

            He watched the executioner turning to the king’s pavilion, looking for the raising of the ruby-encrusted disk that meant for him to proceed with the hanging. Sandy wondered if the king hesitated at all, if his hand strayed to the disk embedded with lapis lazuli even for a moment. The way the seconds stretched made it feel like this might be the case, but the thudding in Sandy’s chest reminded him he was most likely not keeping accurate time in his mind at this moment.

            Whether he hesitated or not, the ruby disk must have been raised, for the executioner nodded, took four steady steps to the trapdoor lever at the side of the platform, and placed his hand upon it. His arm bent ever so slightly as he began to pull, and the wind finally arrived.

            It arrived with a familiarity that made Sandy gasp in unconscious surprise, his body reacting to something in it before his mind could understand, and he was running for the edge of the wall towards the scaffold before anyone else had time to even flinch.

            He leapt from the wall, gold coat shining behind him like the tail of a comet, into the space the crowd had made for him (or he had made the crowd make for him). And as he leapt, the wind increased till it pulled a howling note from the gallows-rope, and _they_ arrived.

            They arrived like candles being snuffed out, stepping from the crowd in patches of darkness and into growing screams.

            By the time Sandy landed on the cobblestones, foot, knee, and hand, his gold coat pooled around him, as many shadow adepts were in the courtyard as light adepts surrounded it. And in the center of it all, in front of the gallows, in an ever-widening circle of empty space, stood Pitch Black.

            Still on the wall, Phosphrae saw Sandy stand and look up at Pitch. She saw the shadow adepts rushing towards the gallows. She saw the growing confusion of the ordinary people in the square, all looking for a way out. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, Magnes gesturing for the light adepts to come and stand with him. In the courtyard, she saw a thin, plain girl get shoved into the wall near a closed gate and begin to cry.

            “ _As I must, as I must, as I must_ ,” she muttered to herself over and over in Shining, and she sighed in relief as she found herself sprinting along the top of the wall to the nearest gate, the words for opening coming easily to mind and lips. The first gate open, she ran to the next, and the next, and even those long rusted or boarded shut opened easily at her words. As she saw the people run out, she could faintly hear Magnes calling to her in Shining from the opposite side of the square, but his pronunciation was wrong, wrong, just enough wrong, or maybe the wind made it sound that way in her ears. Either way, she felt no compulsion to heed his summons. Only to finish opening the gates.

            When Sandy’s eyes finally focused on Pitch in the center of the square, he thought, _you cannot be dancing at a time like this_. But of course he wasn’t. Pitch knew how he had to look today. He stood, slender, tall, and still as a spire of basalt, stiller than anyone without a great deal of magic ever could be. Around him, shadows writhed. They twisted and turned over and into and through each other, taking on the terrible hybrid forms of frights and nightmares as they surrounded him like smoke does a fire on a still day. Sandy wanted to think the effect was lurid, vulgar. But it wasn’t. It was perfect. It drew the eye like blood on sand.

            Compared to Pitch, the other shadow adepts looked nearly like ordinary men and women dressed in black as they fought off the braver militia members, climbed the scaffold, and cut Umbra free. Once she was back on the ground, one of the adepts, a figure masked and clothed so that their gender was impossible to determine, glanced over at Pitch, who inclined his head ever so slightly. Everything happened so fast that Sandy was still trying to determine how the course of action that had set him off running over the wall could be concluded when he saw Pitch’s lips begin to move. When they stopped a few seconds later, Sandy gasped as a wave of pure, cold terror swept over him, Pitch’s magic signature woven intimately into it.

            For a perverse instant he considered letting the sickening fear keep a hold on him for just a moment longer, for though it was terror it was unmistakably _Pitch_. Then he heard the screams, which had been abating, begin to grow again, and he understood that the Pitch-ness of this fear was not targeted only at him, but also at the other light adepts, the king, and the rapidly thinning crowd in the square.

            With a shudder and the sharp taste of lemon on his tongue, Sandy forced, or was forced by light, to drive the fear away. He glanced around the square in time to see the other shadow adepts disappear imperfectly into the shadows of the walls. He noted the newly freed Umbra pass through a formerly boarded-up gate that had fallen to pieces in two neat piles, her form difficult to fix his eyes on. She did not look back. Sandy doubted anyone save him had seen the shadow adepts leave. To judge from the behavior of the crowd, the fear had not abated. Even the other light adepts, when he dared to turn away from Pitch’s unnaturally still form, looked as though they were waking in the grips of their nightmares.

            A grim, humorless smile turned Pitch’s lips upward, and Sandy frowned in answer. Pitch’s plan was easy to see: everyone in the square, including the king, would associate Pitch with the awful fear playing havoc with their minds and bodies.

            But if Pitch meant to call the light adepts’ and the king’s minds away from the other shadow adepts, Sandy knew he had succeeded only temporarily. While he was the only shadow adept to deserve the manhunt of the past week, his status as a traitor to light did not separate him very far from the other shadow adepts in the minds of many light adepts. He would not make the shadow adepts safe for long.

Perhaps they didn’t need much time. Perhaps that didn’t matter at all right now.

            Sandy felt great wheels of golden flame turning in his mind, saw traces of light linger in the air and saw they were paths of what could be and what had been, tangling in unbearable complexity around him and around Pitch. _Why, they would need to live for centuries to bear so much possibility_ , Sandy half-thought, as other parts of his mind begged for him to try and keep control of the solstice light and told him that this foretelling was nothing his apprenticeship had taught him, that he must look away or be blinded.

            In a long moment before listening to that voice in his mind, he looked over at Pitch with wide, staring eyes, and Pitch looked back at him with ones just as wide. What was he seeing? What did the shadows show him that could be comparable to the terrible brilliance Sandy now saw overlaying the world?

            With an effort more suited to swimming with stones tied around one’s ankles, Sandy blinked, and the world looked as he thought other people saw it when he opened his eyes again. And in that instant, Pitch began to speak.

            Sonorous and fine as any actor’s, Pitch’s voice echoed through the square clear as midnight bells. Yet underneath these tones was a quality of thunder, and Sandy became sure, after a few words, that Pitch was sending his voice over the whole city.

            “Light adepts! City of the Moon! Hear the voice of Pitch Black, The Traitor, The Nightmare King! Do you think that magic is safe? Do you think light makes no mistakes?” He laughed. “You have learned the answers to these questions in the fears I have sent to plague your sleep. Today, I come before you all in Nameless Courtyard, to show you how the light adepts have failed you! To show you how the power of the king has failed you! You tried to execute a shadow adept today, and you failed! A shadow adept will not die like a beast at your trembling hands! For your impudence you shall suffer far more than the nightmares I have already seen fit to visit upon you! And to demonstrate my abilities…” in the square his voice lowered to a purr, while over the city it rumbled. “I will show you how even the great and glorious Magnes cannot stand against me.” He looked at Sandy and mouthed, “please don’t stop me”.

            As he did so, Magnes, still on the wall, stalked toward the edge in a greater rage than Sandy had ever seen. He raised his hands and shouted, not sang, the first few words of a simple song of power. The song was one of the first light apprentices learned, to prove that they could direct light. It could rarely be focused, and made light into a simple, blunt force. In the hands of children it was a useful progress test. In the hands of Magnes, now, it might be powerful enough to destroy Pitch.

            Sandy would wait no longer. Pitch began to turn back towards the light adepts, Magnes screamed another word in Shining, and Sandy looked at Pitch and said, so quietly even he could not say that he heard the words rather than felt them, “ _I’m going to keep you safe_.”

            He reached into his mind and pulled out what he needed, his arms moving in no set gestures, imagined sounds like the Origin Tones bursting in his thoughts, but not from his throat.

            A wall of purest golden light sprang up around him and Pitch, and Sandy urged its waving brilliance higher and ever-higher until it grew so tall that none, not even if they looked from the tallest tower of the city, could see what scene might play out at the bottom of that column of light.

            “I said don’t stop me!” Pitch growled. His anger drained away at once, though as he looked up and around at the dazzling barrier that enclosed them both. “I thought you weren’t going to stop me,” he said distantly, lowering his arms. His mouth hung open, and the nightmare creatures around him stilled and faded slowly away.

            “I’m almost certain that what Magnes was about to do would have killed you,” Sandy said, sounding even less present than Pitch. He was in the wall, he was in the air, he was with the other light adepts; his consciousness spun through the city and he could almost see the pattern of it all—

            “You don’t think I could have defended myself?”

            Sandy looked at him, shivered, and brought his focus back to Pitch, and only Pitch. “Do you really think I would have risked it? When I could do—this?” He gestured at the light.

            “Sandy…how…and how is the light not hurting me?”

            “Pitch,” Sandy laughed a little. “I have absolutely no idea. Since that day in Frigoris, I’ve been making up everything as I went along.”

            “If this is what you manage with intuition…” Pitch walked closer to Sandy as Sandy stepped forward in turn, until they were only a little over an arm’s-length apart. Neither noted it aloud, but both were sure that the point exactly midway between them was also the precise center of the circle formed by the wall of light.

            “Well, I don’t think I could do this every day.” Sandy smiled at him briefly. “There’s something about today…a flow, or a refraction—can you feel it?”

            Pitch shook his head.

            “Maybe it’s just the solstice light.” Sandy worried the sleeves of his robe and looked up at Pitch. “Everything today seems like it must happen, like the next curve in a light-knot.” There was a hitch in his breath and Pitch reached over automatically when he noticed a tear threatening to fall from his eye, only to be stopped by the light magic that prevented Sandy from doing harm.

            _Physical harm, that is_ , Pitch thought.

            “And what must happen next…” Sandy shakes his head, angry with himself. “Oh, I never think! Surely, between us, we could have come up with a better solution? One that doesn’t end with you…gone?”

            “Much of this was your idea,” Pitch points out. “I suppose I could stay, though. Live entirely in hiding. Never use my powers. Never upset the light adepts, or anyone, ever again.”

            “I didn’t think it through,” Sandy looked down. “All I could think of was that if you banished, you would at least be alive, and the effects of the Mercy would not be erased.”

            “They’re going to forget anyway,” Pitch said, his voice unreadable.

            “I meant that they wouldn’t forget you. I know no one knows…”

            Pitch’s smile was slight. “Sandy, it’s already too late. Pitch Black is already as forgotten as…Kozmotis. I’ve claimed a place as the Nightmare King in this city. I have become terrible. And now it’s time for you to face me. To be their hero. To win, barely.”

            “Barely?” Sandy raised his eyebrows.

            “Why of course, Sandy. I must be a credible threat to you to make the actions of the light adepts in these past days justifiable. To bring the trust of the city back to you.”

            “This is all for me, is it?”

            “For you, and the city,” Pitch replied. He folded his long legs and sat down on the cobblestones, and Sandy seated himself as well.

            “I’m sure they believe we’re fighting in here,” Sandy said.

            Pitch splayed his fingers against the dusty cobblestones. It was not the last touch of the city he would have chosen, this cold, gritty rock of the execution ground resting rough against his hands. But since it was all he could touch of the thing he loved second-best in the world, then he would. “We should show them something more so they don’t ask you for your version of the story right away.”

            Sandy nodded. “I suppose you’re right. It’s going to take me a long time to figure out how to tell the story…the story the city needs…in Shining.

            “Oh, Pitch.” The tear from before was knocked loose. “Half of me knows this must happen, and half of me is fighting desperately against it. I feel as I felt as a child, trying to speak silly lies in Shining, feverish and weak and pushed along by some greater force.” He sighed, and the wall of light flexes slightly as if it was sighing too. “What kind of battle must we have? Dream creatures against nightmares, high above the wall of light?”

            “I do not think they need forms.” Pitch lifts his hands and brushes them off. “All that matters is that they are the proper colors, that the city may see them.”

            “And that I emerge victorious. Should it be a long, drawn-out battle?”

            “Of course,” Pitch said quickly. “There is…there is no telling when I will see you again.”

            “We could still find ways to talk to each other, even apart.” Sandy’s voice was soft.

            Pitch sighed. “You will have duties. I will be keeping a low profile. I may be…very far away.”

            “Surely the power I have now…”

            Pitch looked at him skeptically. “Are you sure it’ll last? Can you say right now that you control it?”

            Sandy remained silent.

            With a few fluid gestures, Pitch began to call the small shadows out of the irregularities in the cobblestones and grow them into a great cloud of inky black that formed into a slowly turning spiral above his head. Like all shadows, Sandy found it impossible to read.

            “Should I call the light, then? I’ll tell it not to overrun the shadows until just before sunset. Does that suit your theatrical sensibilities?”

            “It’s just what I would have suggested.” Pitch sent his shadows spiraling up until they began to crawl over the upper reaches of the wall of light.

            Sandy half-smiled, and with a casual gesture that, by rights, shouldn’t have done anything, skimmed enough light to equal Pitch’s shadows from the inside of the walls and sent it flying upwards to the sky. Its formlessness seemed heavy with meaning, yet as far as Sandy could tell, the reading was escaping him, as it looked to refer to him as well as his place in times his lifespan surely would not stretch to.

            When light and shadow found each other, high above the walls and roofs of the city, they collided with astonishing physical force, setting off a thunderclap that was only repeated as they met again and again. The magics made visible swirled over and through and around each other, crashing together at every opportunity, changing form and changing form to better attempt to devour and overwhelm the other. The smell of hot metal began to waft through the air, and both Pitch and Sandy heard faint screams from the city filter in through the wall as the constructs moved away from the top of the wall, out of sight, and into more populated areas.

            “Is that what we should be like?” Pitch asked, still looking up.

            “Hard to believe.” Sandy looked over at Pitch. Pale as ash and still somehow burning. “And yet if we did not know how light and shadow were said to meet, would we assume that those forms above were fighting?”

            “Does your heart still beat so violently for me?”

            “I have surrounded you in a wall of golden light to protect you from those who would separate us forever. I have agreed to be separated from you because it is the only way to avoid that separation being permanent. Koz—Pitch. Do not wonder at this. My words of Shining still hold true.”

            “As do mine.” Pitch watched an ordinary white cloud pass over the wall and wondered if noon could hurt him while he was surrounded by so much pure light. “Do you remember other apprentices saying similar things?”

            “I remember them trying,” Sandy said. “But they couldn’t. I thought we could because we were meant to be bonded.”

            “We said forever, then, Sandy. We said forever, not ‘for a lifetime’ as in the bonding ceremony.”

            “What are you saying?” Sandy began to tug on the hems of his sleeves.

            “Nothing likely, that’s for sure.” Pitch drew his knees to his chest. “But Shining and you are the only aspects of light that haven’t failed me, as long as I’ve been paying close enough attention.”

            Sandy’s hands stilled, and his face turned thoughtful. “Light does not always demand a literal interpretation of Shining. Otherwise we would have no poetry.”

            “I know. But if any moments could be said to have true meaning—”

            “Those did. But Pitch, we can’t know right now if our words had any unintended effects. It will take time. And if you’re right…we have that.” He looked out at the wall of light, his unfocused eyes reflecting its shimmer. “This is where I would take your hand, if I could.”

            Pitch clenched his fingers around his knees. “Time apart is not time we have, and we are facing far too much if it now. I fear tomorrow for the tomorrow after it, and all that time, on and on…”

            “It will happen whether we speak of it or not,” Sandy said, turning back to him. “Now, we have until sundown, and it is not yet noon.”

            “And what shall we talk of, what shall we do, till then, to avoid the thought of parting? How can the end of the day not overshadow our thoughts?”

            “Without the distractions of the last time we parted, you mean?”

            “Distractions, you say? The way we have become is like losing a language.”

            “I—I know, Pitch. I know.” Sandy runs his hands through his hair. “Pitch, we were apart for years, and we haven’t been able to be together as much as we needed to erase those years, in the past months. I want to fix that before we part again. Or at least try.

            “I want you to tell me everything about yourself, as you are now. I want you to do that as I look at you, while I memorize the shade of your hair, the angle of your jaw, the way your skin seems stretched so taut across your cheekbones. While I memorize how you move, and the sound of your voice. So I can be sure I think of you as you really are, when you are not with me. I don’t want to risk remembering, loving a fantasy. I want to remember, to love, you.”

            Pitch swallowed, and looked into Sandy’s now dry and unwavering golden eyes. “And will you do the same for me, Sandy? Create yourself so I can hold you in my mind, if not in truth?”

            “Of course.”

            “Well then. Let us see if one day is long enough to create two lovers.”

 

            “…and yet I have to admit that, in the end, I can only hope I’ll remember our truth, when among the light adepts, I’ll be seeing another all the time. I’ll always love you, but they might be able to convince me that I should hate you.”

            “I don’t pay any mind to should. You never have.”

            Sandy smiled, and Pitch lifted a hand from one cobblestone and moved it to another. Sandy placed his hand where Pitch’s had just been—a meager compromise they had worked out over the course of the day.

            Looking up, Sandy saw that the few clouds visible above them had begun to bloom pink and gold around their edges. Pitch followed his gaze, and took a deep breath, which he let out slowly. “It’s nearly time. How are you going to banish me, Sandy?”

            “With your cooperation,” Sandy said. He stood, and Pitch did as well. He then spoke a few words of Shining, and a glimmer of light as thin as a thread appeared in the air, beginning a few feet in front of Pitch and leading away through the wall of light. “You’re the only one who can see that. If you follow it, it will lead you safely out of the city. You’ll probably need to use your magic to conceal yourself, and I can’t help you once you’ve left the city. Either way, I don’t want either Magnes or the king to give you a trial.”

            Pitch nodded. “If our battle ends here, that should be enough of a distraction for me to make myself unnoticeable.”

            “Call your shadows back here, then. I will call my light.”

            They both hesitated for a moment. “This is when we would kiss,” Pitch said, and Sandy nodded.

            “At least…look into my eyes instead.”

 

            Later, Sandy could not recall exactly when the gaze between them broke. Their light and shadows returned without their breaking their gaze, the wall of light crumbled and faded without their breaking their gaze, and even when the light and shadow began to gyre around them, a hurricane of pure power, their gaze was not broken immediately. Yet sometime in that storm, between one blink and the next, Pitch was gone, following the strand of light that would lead him to his prison of the wide world.

            Around Sandy light and shadow struggled and intertwined in a chaotic cloud that seemed to fill the courtyard, and may have even spilled into the streets, though he could not see anything with much clarity beyond a few feet. He thought he saw glimpses of the sky turning rose overhead; he thought he saw that the light adepts were the only ones who had remained; he thought he saw the city vanish and reappear as a vast garden all threaded through with delicate canals of clear water that linked together large, round pools, and he knew he was not seeing true.

            Without knowing why he felt the knife in his heart twisting again and decided to end this false battle, just before sunset or no.

            Though he could have ended it with a thought, he didn’t know who might be watching, and so with three sweeping gestures, with three sounds like thunderclaps, and in three pulsing waves through the vortex of light and shadow, he drove the darkness away until all was uniform light. In the dizzying moment before he let it go, he felt, for the merest of instants, that it was going to blind him. But such thoughts were foolish for a light adept, and in any case, the moment passed quickly.

            Then, shadow gone, light released, battle won, Sandy stood alone in the courtyard, an ordinary cold wind carelessly tossing his robe about. He felt himself to be a grain of sand, or wished himself to be one. Voices began to fall into his ears as if from a great distance. He thought they sounded surprised, happy, triumphant. Sandy shivered at how meaningless they seemed. Why talk now? The meaning had all been wrung out of the day already. And now? Now?

            The last thing Sandy remembered was swaying on his feet and closing his eyes in a slow blink.

 

            When he awoke he found himself in the city a week later, the moon waning away. “You’re a hero,” Phosphrae told him as he sipped a cup of warm broth. “You saved the city from Pitch Black. Nearly at the cost of your own life.”

            “I was just…tired,” he said, looking down towards the foot of one of the spare beds in Fountain Square.

            “I am going to be leaving tomorrow, to return with the other adepts to the Luminous Academy.” Phosphrae smoothed her robe over her knees, her posture as she sat in the small wooden chair at the bedside indicating nothing but perfect formality. “I thought you might like to hear the story of your grand battle. Just in case there are any points regarding which you would wish to correct the public.”

            Sandy paused, then nodded.

 

            “…and so, in consequence, it has now been passed into law that being or becoming a shadow adept is forbidden, carrying the sentence of immediate banishment from the Lunar Kingdom. They are also not to be called adepts, for to be a master of darkness is a shameful thing, to be a master of nothing, a master of evil.”

            Sandy said nothing for a long while. Then, “Yet the king has not invited Magnes to stay and seek out the other shadow adepts?”

            “The light adepts do not care about ordinary shadow adepts,” Phosphrae said. “They cannot create nightmares. They have nothing to do with us.”

            “Oh.” Sandy set the now-empty cup of broth on the bedside table. “I suppose I’ll go back to being the king’s dreamweaver now.”

            “You don’t have to. You could return to the Academy.”

            “I don’t want to leave the city.” Sandy’s voice was very soft. “Not now.” He looked out the window into a late afternoon he knew would taste like peaches, but not so sweet. “You know my story is not the same as their story.”

            “Sandy, I want you to see something,” Phosphrae said, and as he turned to her she lifted her hair so he could see the back of her neck. There was a scar there, like an old burn, made by something that could splash. When she was sure he had seen, she let her golden waves fall back into place. “I have found it difficult in the past to tell the difference between love and hate.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “In my own heart.”

            “Phosphrae. Thank you…for everything you’ve done. To help me. And…I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain…there are no legends, no models, no starstories to aid me…”

            She now was the one to gaze out the window. “We were taught that to speak Shining is to always speak true, and that in Shining everything that is true can be said.” She turned back to Sandy and gave him a small smile. “But I’m not sure it’s always the quickest way to say something.” She rose from the chair and bent over Sandy to embrace him, and he hugged her back as well as he was able. Doing so reminded him of how weak he still was, but he was sorry when Phosphrae let him go.

            “When you go back to the Academy, write to me,” he said, sinking back into the pillows. “We may not be the most honest light adepts, but I trust you. I need to know the good you are doing. And the snags that come with it.”

            “I ask the same of you, Sandy.” Phosphrae pressed one of his hands between her own. “Remember not to let them see you sad. Fevers from stitched wounds have killed those who would have healed on their own.”

            He nodded and pressed his free hand against his heart, bowing his head. Phosphrae followed suit and left quietly, no doubt to prepare for the journey back to the Academy.

            Sandy turned his face to the window and half-shut his eyes, trying not to think about anything.

            By the time others entered the room to congratulate him on his victory and recovery, he had only partially succeeded.

 

***

 

            In the stacks of the Great Library, Pitch dozes with his head on the table, occasionally making a noise which, if pressed, he might concede could be interpreted by the vulgar as a snore. Sandy smiles a little at him, though his quest through the library hasn’t done much to improve his mood. He’s just spent a good two hours in the general history section, and found nothing of substance relating to the War of Dreams. It’s mentioned as Unreal Week in other histories, but the contemporary sources are just _gone_.

            Even with the smaller print runs of that era and the uncertainties of preservation, Sandy knows that a few books and pamphlets should have survived.

            Sandy nudges Pitch’s shoulder with a book holder and Pitch opens his eyes resentfully. He sits up and yawns so widely Sandy hears his jaw pop. “Find anything?” he asks, his pronunciation slightly blurred as he grimaces and massages the joint.

            “I found a lot of nothing that probably means something.” Sandy tries to smooth his hair down from the chaotic state he had worried it into as he looked for missing book after missing book. “It seems like everything having to do with the War of Dreams has gone missing. It all seems excessively obvious. I mean, empty shelf-feet!”

            “But I wasn’t accused of stealing any books not related to the adepts,” Pitch points out.

            “Then maybe those books went wherever the chronicles went. I think we need to ask a few questions about the catalog before we go on.” He undoes the neatening of his hair in one sweep of his hands. “Obvious! It’s so obvious that something’s being hidden. I had thought it would just be neglect and decay we had to contend with, but this—I should have noticed something.”

            “Sandy, there are a thousand reasons why you wouldn’t have noticed anything.” Pitch stands and gathers his hat and glasses. “First of which is that it wasn’t your duty, second of which, whatever this was, wasn’t done with magic. It’s not the kind of thing that would stand out against anything else in the city.

            “Now look. I was just sleeping, but I think you need a break now. Let’s get some water, buy something to eat. Before they accused me of book thievery, I became well acquainted with the library’s well house and the carts selling all sorts of deliciously awful and portable food by the newer library buildings.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you still reading this are super hardcore and I love you.


	10. Tea and Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy come up with a new plan for the finding of the missing books. A great deal of tea is drunk. Sandy meets Jack Frost in person and sees how people react to him.

“I was thinking a lot about that last day of the War of Dreams,” Sandy says as he and Pitch sit on a low stone wall in front of one of the smaller library buildings, in the shade of a cartwheel tree, its enormous, dense leaves preventing even a few dapples of sunlight from warming the stone. “All of it, I mean.” Better than thinking about how this massive tree is younger than both of them, anyway.

            “And?” Pitch takes a bite of the heavily spiced chicken, served on skewers, that Sandy’d just bought for them both.

            “Well, what was with that speech you gave to rile everybody up? You didn’t—and don’t—talk like that. Looking back, I’m almost surprised everyone credited it in that moment. That they didn’t all start spinning around and looking for the audience.”

            Pitch laughs. “Of all questions about that day—well, I suppose it’s one most suitable for lunch. All right. I’ll admit it. I stole most of it. From,” he pauses, glancing off to his left, “a Childe play. _The Five Beacons Tragedy_ , or something like that. Full of stabbings and secret messages and corrupt dukes. You know the type. And I don’t think any of the principalities of the Empire of the Five Beacons have ever even had dukes. Anyway. It was close enough for my purposes. I must have been having a hard time not saying something that revealed the true shape of things.”

            “A Childe play!” Sandy grins. “Surely there must have been something even better in one of Gloverson’s.”

            “Nah—too interesting, too honest, too real. He—well, his sister, of course, everyone knew it was her writing the best stuff then—never wrote a villain whose heart I couldn’t feel beating in my own chest. Not useful when one’s trying to make a city hate and fear one in thirty seconds.”

            “I suppose you’re right.”

            For a time then, they eat in silence, watching the breeze play through the small garden between two buildings.

            “You know what?” Sandy says. “No one’s ever asked me about the Gloversons. I’m not sure they even remember that Maliu was mostly just the businessman. If I correct anyone now, though, I’ll never be left alone.”

            “Ah, yet another disadvantage of immortality,” Pitch says, pressing his hand to his chest dramatically.

            Sandy laughs and covers his mouth with his hand. With moments like this—warm, early-fall afternoons in the city, together with Pitch and able to laugh with him—he thinks that all the other disadvantages of immortality have almost been worth it. He wonders if Pitch thinks the same thing, though as soon as he does he realizes he’s never had to wonder.

            _You love me and I love you with no regard for the arcs of dramas_ , Sandy thinks, _Constant as the stars._ His smile turns wry. While it may make immortality worthwhile, it also makes their quest for information worthwhile. Perhaps the book explaining something as unique as life everlasting on the earth could also explain a few simple things about touch.

 

Before returning to any of the rooms holding materials from the Luminous Academy’s library, the two go to the Great Library’s well house for another drink of water.

            Since the library is built on one of the few hills within the boundaries of the city, its well house is not at street level, but instead is set underneath the ground floor reading room in the main building. To access it, Pitch and Sandy walk down a short spiral staircase to a small, cool chamber with damp stone walls. Light from the reading room filters down to the well house via sturdy blocks of cloudy glass set into the floor above. It is not a bright place, and will not be unless there come to be light adepts enough to set globes of sunshine in the sconces on the walls. Even if light apprentices were found in the numbers Sandy had seen in his youth, it would take decades before light could be distributed that way. _Then again_ , he thinks, _maybe St. North will come up with some other means of light before then._ He doesn’t care for that line of thought. Even the gas lamps had unnerved him; the idea of a light more artificial than that has so many implications with magic—both his and that of the fire adepts—that the idea of it being developed in a land so bereft of its rightful power adds more than a touch of desperation to his conception of the quest he and Pitch are currently on.

            He decides to ask what Pitch is thinking instead.

            “I’m wondering if this well house has its own moonpool,” Pitch answers. “We assumed the one we found connected to every well house in the city, but we certainly didn’t confirm it.”

            “If it ever did, the water doesn’t taste like it now.” Sandy puts back the dipper he has just used to drink. He steps as far back from the well as the small room will allow and sits on the simple stone bench built into the wall.

            Pitch nods. “But then I was also thinking about what else might be under the library. I haven’t been drinking the right shadows to tell as accurately as I could, but there are secrets there.” He picks up the dipper but doesn’t drink from it, stirring the clear water in the heavy earthenware bucket instead. “The Empire of the Five Beacons has cities most like this one. When I was there I learned that every city, as soon as it starts being a city and not just a town, starts to include its double. No, that’s not right. The Imperial Common word is troublesome to translate. And the closest single word I can think of to say what I really mean is in Erebusian. Forget one word then. Every city contains...let’s see…a shadowy part, not necessarily equal to the illuminated part, but inseparable from it, no matter how much the illuminated part tries to forget about it. But with a sense of taboo about the shadowy part.” He shakes his head. “Strange word. In some literal senses it means ‘sewer’. But then again it also means ‘ash’ sometimes. Which makes more sense, I suppose, since they do cremate their dead, and then the catacombs…” he trails off.

            “This city might have more than one…shadow, reflection, double—whichever,” Sandy says. “The new sewers and new water lines are barely over a hundred years old. The gas lines are even newer. The moonpool seemed ancient. I’d imagine there’s something in between the two, but how to find it—without destruction that might ruin the reason for finding it in the first place—that, I don’t know. Would you expect to find the lost books there?”

            Pitch takes a drink of water and goes to sit by Sandy, his face thoughtful. “Maybe. So I was accused of stealing books. I could have, but even without that sign-in book, there were always pages to watch me enter or exit the library. Pages who collected the books I requested. I could have stolen the books, but I would have needed to use shadow magic to have done so. Since I didn’t, that means that someone without magic must have taken the books—or that’s most likely, anyway. Only someone with magic, or royal political clout, could have managed to take the books out of the library. I was the only one with magic who came to the library during my recent few months here. And the pages’ gossip never carried any hint of royal oversight.”

            “So you think the books must never have been taken out of the library at all,” Sandy says, and Pitch nods.

            “At least, not out through the teeth.”

            “So the under-parts of the city, if they exist, must have been made for some purpose. Some people’s purpose. And so they must have had entrances. And some of these entrances must be in the Tooth Palace, since the books are gone, but the people capable of taking them don’t know where they are. Or claim to, in the case of the king.” As he talks, Sandy opens one hand and tilts it toward the other, repeating this last step again and again with alternating hands, as if he is passing the puzzle from palm to palm.

            “That’s what I’m thinking,” Pitch says.

            “Would looking at old library maps be too simple?”

            “Well, unless you want to start shaking the foundations right away, I don’t see where else we would start.”

 

            Looking at the maps of the library from years past proves to be not a simple task at all. There are no gaps in the record, thankfully, but the philosophy of map-making has changed enough over the years that both Sandy and Pitch find themselves at a loss when trying to compare the older maps to the newer ones, nevermind the various odd outliers that appear every few decades.

            “But why in the world would anyone think of mapping a series of buildings, mostly composed of rectangles, as a series of concentric circles?” Sandy mutters to himself, frowning at the three-hundred-year-old map sitting on the table in front of him.

            “Perhaps to try and divide branches of knowledge according to the zodiac?” Pitch replies absently, fingertips of his right hand pressed to his forehead as he tries to compare a twenty-year-old map with a forty-year-old one.

            “Shade. You’re right.” Sandy shakes his head at the faded drawings around the outside edge of the map proper. “What an asinine idea.” He carefully picks the map up and replaces it in the wide, narrow drawer he had taken it out of only a few minutes before. After closing it, he rubs his hand over his face. “How long, really, does it take to come up with the idea of making a map that corresponds to physical reality?” He opens the drawer that corresponds to the oldest maps. “Oh!” he smiles in relief at the array of neat, straight lines marked in what must be the most stable ink ever made, marked on a thin sheets of wood. “Apparently it comes and goes.”

            “Well, in Verd I think it was always present, while in Windburne I don’t think it has ever taken hold.”

            Sandy can tell from the way Pitch is talking that he’s biting his tongue, a bad habit he remembers from the time he spent helping Kozzy study for his exams. Obviously he’s not making any progress with his maps. “Come over here, Pitch. I think I’ve found something useful. But I’ll need your help to set it on the table.”

            The old wooden map is segmented into hand-sized panels. Rust-stained holes along their sides indicate to Sandy that they were once held together with small hinges, but whether the metal corroded entirely away or if the librarians removed the metal for preservation reasons, he isn’t sure. Either way, he breathes easier once he finds a newish piece of paper with an explanation of how to piece the panels together at the bottom of the drawer once he and Pitch have removed about half the segments, relying on the logic of connecting lines to make assumptions about the map.

            After double-checking the key and switching two panels, Sandy and Pitch step back to try and get a larger sense of what they’ve just pieced together. “It’s only this building,” Sandy notes.

            Pitch turns over the paper with the explanatory grid. “It’s catalogued as a construction supervisor’s plan. L.Y. 1410.”

            “That’s perfect, then!” Sandy hurries around the table to collect the newest map, from a detailed survey for the expansion and repair of the gas lines embedded in and around the library, made only a few years previously. When he returns, he spreads the map on the table next to the panels. “All we have to do is find the points were the maps don’t match, and we’ll know where something’s hidden.”

            “Sandy.” Pitch spreads his hands to indicate both maps. “All we have to do?”

            The older plan is of course detailed, of course meant to be accurate. Next to the modern map, differences in scale are immediately apparent. Both are dense with lines and measurements, but while the modern map’s key is clearly labeled in the upper right-hand corner, the older map includes nothing but a panel in which one list of symbols corresponds to another list of symbols. With the single color of ink used to draw the map, it’s nigh-impossible at times to see if a particular line is meant to represent something physically present or convey some other kind of information.

            “It occurs to me,” says Sandy, “that neither one of us is an architect from the 1400s or a gas engineer from the 2100s.”

            “We could start trying to compare the maps anyway.” Pitch doesn’t sound enthused.

            Sandy shakes his head. “No. I don’t have to scry to see that if we do that, we’ll just end up staring at these maps for hours and hours, not learning a thing, until we’re both in terrible moods. Well. After the rest of this fruitless day, maybe that wouldn’t take too long.

            “We might feel like we were doing something, but we wouldn’t be. Let’s go back to Fountain Square. We need to talk out a better solution than brute force and I’m tired of looking over my shoulder for pages every time I speak to you.”

 

            “What we need,” Pitch says, holding a mug of somewhat stewed black tea to his chest, “is someone we can ask about those maps.”

            Sandy pours the last cupful of tea out of the pot into his own mug. “I think the construction of the Great Library might be too specialized a subject for us to find an expert on it.”

            “What about an expert on something else?” Pitch slouches further down onto the couch until he’s nearly horizontal, continuing to drink his tea at the same time.

            _Of all the things to master over the course of five centuries_. Sandy’s tea isn’t very warm, and he grimaces after the first sip before continuing to drink it anyway. “Maybe I could ask North.”

            “North? I thought we were aiming for discretion.”

            “Huh? Oh, that’s right, I never did tell you about the party. Well, what everyone knows of him is maybe half of who he is. I think he could be our ally, and with his brilliance in mechanical matters, he might be used to looking at plans of any sort, and figuring them out.”

            Pitch looks skeptical.

            “All right, look, let me make more tea, and I’ll explain.”

 

One pot of tea later, Sandy and Pitch kneel next to a low table between the sofas, trying to figure out how best to draft a note asking for North’s help. “Surely they’ve stopped using that form of address by now,” Sandy says, resisting the urge to disassemble the very modern ink pen that he assumes the housekeepers provided, though why they would have done that, he couldn’t say. Regardless, he hadn’t found any older ones, and not having to refill it every line or two leaves him with excess habitual motion while writing. For now, he settles for drumming his fingers on the table.

“I don’t know, I didn’t exactly have extensive correspondence while I was here.” Pitch is biting his tongue again. “But it might be good if you have some anachronisms when you write—wait. Sandy, you just wrote a letter to the king himself, surely this will be easier than that?”

            “When I write to the king I usually keep my letters short, and endeavor to say nothing. The language I use is the very formal kind only used in official documents even when we were young. That’s not what we want for North’s note.”

            “Yes, but from how you described him to me, I don’t think he’s going to be that hung up on formalities.”

            Sandy leans back against the base of the sofa. “It’s not North I’m thinking of. I don’t really believe that any mail originating from Fountain Square is going to be secure, and I want to avoid saying anything I don’t want to say. Using correct, current style is invisible. If my note is peppered with anachronisms, I don’t want anyone reading it and saying ‘Aha! He’s referencing the age of the Windburne queen, which surely means thus and so and etc’. As if I had a reason to bother with those kinds of wordgames.”

            Pitch opens his mouth as if to retort, but after a moment’s thought closes it, shaking his head. “I see your point. But why is this something you thought of? After so much time on the island…”

            “I know, I know. There was a moment in a flower shop before I went to North’s party. I used an old greeting and the woman who ran the place said I seemed like something from a starstory. And those are all so encrusted with meaning. Like the tale of Green Kinna. It was never meant to be about war, much less that debacle over the placement of the border between Windburne and the Lunar Kingdom.” He looks pensive. “And that wouldn’t have happened if there had been light adepts to meet with air adepts.” He frowns as he tilts his head back and forth to stretch his neck. “I should have done something, then. I could have. At the beginning.”

            “I’m glad you stayed on the island.” Pitch’s voice is flat and definitive. “The thought of you anywhere near a battlefield fills me with horror.”

            “We _are_ immortal, you know.”

            “That’s what we call it. We’ve kept our youthful appearances. We’ve lived for over five centuries. But are we immune to the trials of war? Disease, exposure, starvation, thirst—a sharp blade?”

            Sandy looks at him oddly. “Yes, we are. Or, I know I am.”

            The silence in the room might as well be made of granite.

            “When…did you learn that?” Pitch says, his voice nearly inaudible.

            Sandy’s gold eyes meet his only for a moment. “At around the same time the Ariel Mountain War was going on. During the century you were away.”

            Pitch shifts forward unconsciously, uncurling his hands, and Sandy wonders how he can still react like that, so thoughtlessly. Yet even without meeting Pitch’s eyes, he can tell the exact moment when understanding returns to him, as he sees him sink back, his hands now clenching so tightly the knuckles go white. “But…but when I returned…you said nothing…and you…the last light adept…”

            “It was long done by the time you returned. Anyway, perhaps you are right. Perhaps we are not immune. Perhaps my being a light adept was what….Forgive me, Pitch. I was very ill.”

            “I should be the one begging your forgiveness,” Pitch whispers vehemently.

            “You did.” Sandy meets his eyes and holds them, this time.

            “Not as much as I should have.” Though Sandy can tell he’s trying to hide it, he sees tremors running through Pitch’s body, as though he is on the verge of flying apart into a thousand pieces.

            “Pitch. Please, I want to leave that in the past now. We’re here, in Fountain Square. Together. Besides—do you really think my illness could have stood against the full force of Light and Shining its instrument?”

            “All will be well someday.” Pitch doesn’t quite still yet, but his breathing slows. “But it looks like it’s going to be a mighty close thing.” His tone doesn’t quite lift to wryness and ends up sounding hollow.

            “Yes.” Sandy closes his eyes. “In the fullness of time. And we, Pitch, are full to brimming with time.

            “Shall we return to present matters, now?”

            “Yes,” Pitch breathes. “But let me say, before we do—I’ve been a fool. With my traveling. I thought I was on a quest. That I knew where I was going. That it was something I had to do. But the only destination I ever had was the Isle of Dreams. I should have realized that being apart didn’t make things any easier. That I should have been with you. I shouldn’t have ever thought I could find the answers alone.” His smile is uncertain. “If this is all in the plan of Light, it’s been far too patient with me.”

            _Yes, we have_. The thought unbidden to Sandy’s mind, and he pushes it away, slightly troubled. He mustn’t identify himself with Light. He mustn’t forget that he is its conduit, not the power itself. Otherwise—well, he is not sure what would happen. But he is sure that right now he is Sandy, and has been Sandy for a very long time. And despite everything, he wants to lose himself as little as he wants to lose Light.

            “It’s been patient with both of us,” Sandy replies. “Now, ugh, back to the letter—wait!”

            “What is it?”

            “I still have the notes from earlier, and we probably got more mail today. We can just look at them.”

 

            “We hope you will accept our invitation to a formal audience on 30 Garner—WHAT?”

            Pitch looks up from his pile of letters at Sandy’s indignant cry. As far as he’s been able to gather so far, the only style rule consistently followed these days is to write the first letter of a common word in the same size as the rest of the text, and then to write the next one or two letters in a miniscule size floating near the top of the normal-sized letter. Opinions on what makes a word common vary wildly. This, combined with the extreme leftward slant that seems popular in fashionable handwriting these days, makes nearly every single piece of correspondence Sandy’s asked Pitch to look at far more trouble to read than the content is worth. Now, he knows that whatever’s caused Sandy’s outburst can’t be good, but he’s sure it will be more interesting than another barely comprehensible invitation to brunch by people neither of them is likely to know.

            As soon as Sandy sees him looking at him, he waves the letter at Pitch as he pushes one hand through his hair in frustration. The gilded and embossed royal seal on the back of the stationery winks at him in the firelight. “This doesn’t make any sense!” Sandy tosses the letter on the table so both his hands can be engaged in disarranging his hair. “30 Garner? That’s over two months from now! And the king has been constantly asking for correspondence! So now that I’m in the city—and, mind you, passing out light on the streetcorner—he’s telling me the earliest he can meet with me is 30 Garner! It’s absurd. Does he—no—what—like I wouldn’t _say_ anything about this to others—this can’t be right. I’m going to write him at once.”

            “Hold on.” Pitch picks up the letter and peers closely at it. “This paper’s been written on directly.”

            “Yes, that’s how letters are produced. Now, where’d that pen go? This is a letter I know how to write—”

            “The king doesn’t write normal letters,” Pitch says. “When I was getting permission to use the library I got a few pieces of official royal correspondence. The impression of the writing wasn’t ink. They’ve got this layered paper, for official letters, as far as I can tell. The top piece, that’s actually written on, gets saved for the records. And then the bottom piece, with the royal seal on the back, gets sent to whomever.”

            “So, technically, this letter may not exist.” Sandy nods slowly. “But the letter I wrote, demanding an audience with the king at a sooner date would. And then…well, whatever he planned to do with that, it’s not difficult to imagine the advantage it would give him in pursuing his agenda if he had a few documents that showed I wanted to meet with him.”

            “What are you going to do?” Pitch sits back and begins opening more letters.

            “The king thinks I don’t know about the layered paper.” Sandy taps his finger on the coffee table. “So maybe I won’t. And I’ll also be properly respectful. I’ll send a very cordial note to the palace accepting the proposed date. It’s not wrong, and if they want me to do something else, they’re going to have to be more clear about it.” He opens his eyes very wide and grins at Pitch. “After all, what does a light adept know about guile or selfishness?”

            “Stars, Sandy. More than anyone who’s lived a single lifetime, to be sure.”

            Sandy grin fades. “Maybe not. It really isn’t in my nature, to be looking for lies. And I have spent most of my time away from people for the past three centuries. I’m sure I’ve forgotten many, many things. And then, new things have appeared. I would have probably played into whatever game he’s set up if it hadn’t’ve been for you. You’ve kept up with the world. Kept learning about it. I haven’t.”

            “You learned how to bottle starlight,” Pitch says, a half-opened red envelope in his hand. “That’s more than I’ve learned.”

            “Which is?”

            Pitch falls silent for several long moments. “Obviously not how to maintain a conversation.” He rests his head on his hand and stares into the fireplace. “I’ve traveled the world and the seven seas. And I’ve learned…everybody’s looking for something. Some of them want—oh, it’s no use making generalizations. So I’ll just make one. No one is content for long.

            “So you see, not a very good thing to learn.”

            Sandy looks surprised. “You think so? Contentment wouldn’t have led me to learn how to bottle starlight. Contentment wouldn’t make me glad to see you appear out of a storm. Contentment…doesn’t make the Serene flood. It’s not the same thing as happiness.”

            “Well, I do believe that is positively heretical according to the last philosophy I read,” Pitch says, opening the envelope the rest of the way. “To be so in favor of things happening.”

            “That’s because only the people in favor of things not happening, of stasis instead of change, are the ones writing the philosophy that gets sold. Ach, I’m talking about things I know nothing about. But, no! I spent decades in this city! And I saw plenty of changes, and I still think that at any given time, only maybe five percent of the people should have been able to maintain a desire for the kingdom to remain stagnant.”

            Pitch smiles at him—a soft, contemplative smile, a smile of one reflecting on a very good choice they once made. “You’ve changed too.”

            Sandy colors, but his look to Pitch is skeptical. “Maybe. Not enough. I still say I spent too much time on the island.”

            “And I spent too much time wandering around the steppes of Windburne. It’s time to move forward. Think about new ways of being. Stop agonizing over letters. Attend a possibly awkward tea with the famous Jack Frost.”

            “That’s awfully specific advice.”

            “Yes, but look: North’s invited you to join him and a small party on _The Sweet_ the day after tomorrow. I think it’s one of those tearoom riverboats. He mentions specifically that Jack Frost will be there.”

            Sandy reaches over and takes the note from Pitch’s hand. “And not much else. Well, I’ll go, of course. I wanted to talk to him anyway, and I think it’ll be easier to explain what we hope to do in person.”

            “Aren’t you interested in meeting Jack Frost?”

            “You’ve seen him. What’s he like?”

            “Well he knows how to behave sitting next to highly-ranked government officials,” Pitch says. “But then again, you know how to do that too. So, yes, while I have seen him so that I could pick him out of a group of people, I also haven’t seen him. I have no idea what he’s like.”

            Sandy looks over the note again. “It’s so _simple_ ,” he murmurs. “Or at least it would be, if Frost wasn’t the only other magic-user in the city right now. Now he has to mean something all the time.” He yawns and rubs his eyes. “I can’t figure it out now. I’m going to go to sleep.”

            “What are our plans for tomorrow?”

            “I guess we could go back to the library for a while…I think I need to offer more light to what people I can, especially since I’m not sending dreams. I need to talk to the people of the city as well. I’ll do that early, while you’re still asleep.”

            “You know that going to the library again is probably only going to show more absences.”

            Sandy nods. “But I still think the question I had about the catalogue might be important. I realized after we left that I had forgotten to ask—I think the maps, on the whole, disgusted me into forgetting it.” He stands, setting North’s invitation on the table. “Goodnight Pitch,” he says and flashes him a small smile. Wishing goodnight to the shadow adept in Fountain Square. The uproar it would cause would be staggering.

            As he climbs the stairs to his room, he imagines telling the whole city—no preparation, no attempt to erode the imaginary of Pitch Black—maybe it’d be good for it. He shakes his head. What is he thinking? That wouldn’t help anyone, anything, at all.

            He opens the window of his room a few inches to let in the early autumn air and some faint, silvery moonlight. The slight night noises of the city aren’t anything like the sound of the ocean, but they still help him sleep. He climbs under the thick, down comforter and pulls it up to his shoulders. As he drifts off into dreams free from human guidance, he thinks again of the Serene, and something about the river and Pitch coalesce in a moment he is not conscious enough to realize he’s going to forget. _The Serene would tell the city about Pitch_. Before he can figure out what he means, he’s sound asleep.

 

            North picks him up the next day at Fountain Square in his horseless carriage. Sandy’s glad to see that it’s painted a bright, glossy, enamel red, and that North has driven himself—these two things make him feel as though the Norths he met at the party—both the boisterous host and the quiet, shrewd, mechanic doing his best not to get his beard caught in the kingdom’s political gears—are true enough to set a compass by.

            Then again, perhaps the absence of any personnel with North is more a matter of necessity than anything else. As he climbs in beside North, he notes that the vehicle only has two seats. With the little space next to the mountain of a mechanic, the open sides, and the steady, yet loud and unsettling mechanical rumbling coming from behind him, Sandy can’t help from looking back for reassurance to where Pitch stands in the doorway, invisible to anyone but him.

            _Don’t worry,_ he sees Pitch mouth. _You’re immortal_.

            Sandy shoots him a look. It’s just like him, really, to be like this when he knows Sandy can’t respond. He turns back to North, who’s in the midst of adjusting a few levers. “Have you been using this…device…long?”

            North laughs as he pushes a shining brass handle all the way to the left in a narrow slot on the panel full of controls in front of him. “I do not know what is counting as ‘long’ for you my friend. But I promise you I would not have painted it red if I was not confident it would not fly apart on the roads.” He presses a button in the center of the panel and with a change in the pitch of the rumbling, the horseless carriage begins to move forward at a slow, steady pace.

            Sandy digs his hands into the edge of the leather seat and forces himself to breathe deeply. This can’t be so alarming, can it? After everything else he’s lived through, surely he can calmly ride in a carriage. It’s not going any faster than any other he’s ridden in, and if he manages to ignore the noise behind him and emptiness in front of him—no. It’s no good. Moving like this, without muscle and without magic, has rapidly shot to the top of his all-time eeriest experiences. “North,” he begins, not sure if he’s going to ask him to stop or not.

            “Sandy?” They’ve only just reached the street that will take them to the riverfront, and Sandy’s a little comforted by the fact that many of the other people on the street are staring at the vehicle with as much consternation as he feels. “Do not worry,” North continues. “We will not be going faster than horses. It is not time or place.”

            “Yes, yes, fine.” Sandy nods without meaning, wishing there was some way to strap himself in. “But, North—stars! This is the strangest thing—please, I can’t imagine this working without magic, but I can’t feel any magic in it—I feel—oh dear. Slightly ill.”

            “I can tell you how it works,” North says, glancing over at him with some concern.

            “Yes, as long as I know someone knows how it works,” Sandy says, swallowing hard as North, seeing a break in more conventional traffic, quickly presses a button or two and adjusts a lever so the horseless carriage pulls out into the street. He glances up at the former toymaker pleadingly.

            North grins reassuringly and claps him on the shoulder. There’s a twinkle in his eye as he takes a deep breath, and the thought strikes Sandy it’s probably been a long time since North had a willing, fresh audience to talk to about this device. “First thing,” he begins, gesturing with one hand at the long horizontal lever in the center of the front panel, “this is how to adjust the direction. And if you lean out—okay you may not want to do that, but if you did lean out you will see that when I move the lever to the left the front wheels turn to the left, and this is simple mechanical, sort of like a ship’s rudder, yes? But it is different from the early type because I have added hydraulic system to make it less of a test of strength to move—which was fun, but still a little disappointing, because with more moving parts the system does not look so simple and elegant, will now take specialized knowledge to repair, not that I am planning on making any more of these but you know I cannot help but be thinking. Anyway, after that I had to put the shell on the autocarriage—I do not like that name, I will have come up with something else—to preserve the aesthetics, and this is giving me almost too much room to have fun with. I do not know if you are familiar with my toys—there are not many of them around these days anymore.” North pauses for a moment, looking wistful, before turning his attention to the front panel once more. “Anyway, I like to make my toys very pretty, and any shell can be put over the basic clockwork. But I decided to make this vehicle mostly simple, again, thinking of fast little sailing ships. But of course we need no sail and that is most exciting part! All right, so you know how there is gas that powers the lights of the city…”

 

By the time North guides the vehicle in amongst a few other carriages near a stable near the dock where _The Sweet_ is moored (a few of the horses being led inside eyeing it with suspicion), Sandy still doesn’t know how it works; however, he is absolutely certain that North does. In fact, given the right environment, Sandy thinks he might almost be willing to ride in it while it was taken up to top speed. Still, he refrains from mentioning this to North quite yet.

            The host of _The Sweet_ ushers them up to the glass-walled tearoom and guides them to their places at a small table with four chairs. North sets the gloves he had been wearing while driving on the seat of the chair and drapes his scarf over the back. He leans down to Sandy while nodding towards the rest of the room. “Many of these people were at my party a few days ago. Glance over while you take off your gloves and see if you recognize any of them.”

            Sandy does so, and uses the opportunity to take in the room as well. The tearoom is extremely clean and new-looking, so much so that he finds himself expecting to catch a whiff of fresh paint at any moment. The wooden floor has been waxed to a mirrorlike sheen, the heavy cutlery on the tables glitters with every shifting ray of sunlight coming through windows clear as air, the tablecloths are whiter than clouds and stiff enough to stand on their own, and only a few small sprigs of pale blue watereye in cut-glass vases offer even slight relief from the smooth-lined perfection of the room, which seems to Sandy to have been copied directly from a no doubt very highly rated aesthetics magazine. The people in the room, of course, are hardly part of that perfection, but they don’t offer much relief from it either. Mingling between the other tables are about twenty or so men and women—far more men than women, Sandy notes with some puzzlement—dressed in a collection of muddy hues. They move about with barely concealed tension, nervously adjusting their hair, their cuffs, their collars, or fidgeting in some other small way. Only one man appears capable of standing still or moving with anything like smoothness, and Sandy notices to his displeasure that this person is both the only one he recognizes and the unpleasant secretary he and North had dined with at the earlier party.

            Sandy tells North as much and he nods. “Understandable,” he says in a low tone of voice, “but they all think they are much more memorable than they really are. North gestures for Sandy to follow him and he walks over to a member of the tearoom’s staff standing unobtrusively near the door to an alcove holding a dumbwaiter. “Please open the windows on the river side of the boat, as arranged earlier,” he says to the young woman in a sharply ironed uniform of watereye blue. She nods to North and steps away.

            “Sandy, I know I cannot give you good advice yet or maybe ever, but for this tea I say would be good to watch to learn rules of the game. I will be distracting and putting on more faux pas of the barbaric north than usual. It is what they expect of me and they will not notice you being quiet. But then again, after Jack gets here, maybe no one will be noticing us at all.” North frowns slightly. “That is, except for the secretary.”

            “North, is he dangerous?”

            “Not to you, I am sure.” North shrugs.

            Sandy presses a small hand to North’s massive forearm. “I don’t want to be or appear indifferent anymore. If there’s anything…”

            “You do enough by accepting my invitations,” North says. “The things I must deal with have little to do with light, and only indirectly with magic. Now, do you not think this is a very small room to be having such a conversation in?”

            Sandy nods, though he can’t suppress a troubled frown. The machinations in North’s life have little to do with light? But everything in the Lunar Kingdom has to do with light. Or at least…had. Sandy suddenly feels as old as his years claim him to be. Without light, without magic—or at least only in dreams and spectacle, the kingdom has managed to move on. If he died, the people would sorrow, but not despair as they did in the time of the Dimming. Even those dying of old age today would have managed to structure their lives entirely without magic.

            _And still they need it. But they don’t know what they need until someone arrives to give it them._

            Sandy’s mind fills with an uneasy image of a vast red maw opening from the collective soul of the people of the Lunar Kingdom, growing sharp teeth and tearing and swallowing anything it could reach in an attempt to sate a hunger that could never be answered in this way. The brisk fall breeze through the window suddenly seems icy. Yes, the current king seems more concerned with keeping others out of the Lunar Kingdom, but who can say what the next ruler, on the one after that, will do?

            His thoughts are interrupted by North calling for the attention of the other guests, letting them know that their second guest of honor is about to arrive. He offers Sandy a slight bow to indicate that he is the first guest of honor, and Sandy copies him, hoping that this is not one of the customs of the northern provinces that North said he would be putting on.

            The guests hurry eagerly toward the windows, and only the secretary stands content, at the back of the crowd. North catches Sandy’s eyes and lifts his chin, tilting his head toward the open window, indicating that Sandy should come over and stand by him at the forefront of the group. When he reaches a place where he can see out over the river, his mouth falls open in surprise for a moment before he can school his face into a more neutral expression. What he sees tells him he might not have been imagining the iciness of the breeze just a minute ago.

            Jack Frost is walking to _The Sweet_ from the opposite bank of the river. Sandy watches in amazement as he steps forward, creating a sturdy sheet of ice perpendicular to the river’s flow with every foot he advances. Though the edges of the ice sheet trail off into lacy filigree, they don’t dissolve or soften into shapelessness thanks to waves or currents, and despite how delicate the ice appears overall, Sandy knows that it must be in fact quite strong, for Jack is followed by four tall, broad-shouldered men in the uniform of palace guards. From this distance, those four guards seem expressionless and show no sign of trepidation at walking on ice that had not been there until very recently and should in fact not be there at all, given the bright sun shining on it on an Autumn day that only promises Winter but does not even come close to providing it.

            _They’ve done this before_ , Sandy thinks, considering the guards again. He can’t blame them, of course, and he can’t blame the person who came up with the idea in the first place. This display of power is both compelling and a perfect demonstration of what Jack can do.

            But Jack’s never had to do magic in the presence of an adept before, or at least this is what Sandy assumes. Water adepts—no, Sandy’s only ever seen them in the city once before, soon after the Nightmare War. Earth adepts—Jack wouldn’t have been likely to have encountered any of them at court. Fire adepts—rare again, what with the distance between the Empire and the Kingdom. Maybe Toothiana had seen Jack’s magic, but he wouldn’t have known she was a fire adept. Air adepts—these were the most likely to have seen Jack’s magic, but Sandy imagines such encounters, if they had occurred, would not have led to any teaching moments. As Pitch had complained bitterly on one visit to the island, Air adepts avoided offering anything that could be construed as criticism verbally, preferring to note such statements down in weaving first, so that the criticizer had time to think on what they really meant to say. It made learning a slow process, and if the air adepts had given Jack any letters of guidance, there was no guarantee that the letters had actually reached him.

            Restraining his wonder at the formation of the ice, Sandy begins to look for signs of how Jack is accomplishing it. He peers at him, trying to take in as much detail as he can. The boy wears a neat, fashionable suit in a blue a few shades darker than the sky, with what looks like some sort of decorative pattern in white spreading from his collar and the cuffs of both his sleeves and trousers. His hair is white, and his skin is unnaturally pale, as Pitch had mentioned. He wears no gloves, and in a moment of realization that almost has Sandy exclaiming aloud, he’s not wearing any shoes either.

            Of course. With no training from adepts of any kind, or even conversation with them, Jack’s had to come up with techniques to use his power on his own. Jack is letting his body serve as a conduit, as all untrained magic-users Sandy’s seen have done. And it looks like that’s all Jack knows how to do. If it wasn’t necessary, the king surely wouldn’t allow his adept to appear in public without shoes. It wouldn’t do for anyone to start considering the idea that the boy wasn’t being provided for.

            And, though Sandy isn’t sure if the king has considered this, allowing the boy to use only this one general method of controlling his magic makes him far easier to control. No matter how powerful he is, his reliance on his body means that he can still easily be restrained.

            Walking barefoot on solid ice might look impressive to those who are more familiar with ice than magic, but to Sandy, it speaks of how one-sided the arrangement between Jack and the king must be.

            When Jack reaches within fifty feet or so of _The Sweet_ , he makes a simple beckoning gesture— _no training_ , Sandy thinks again, though he’s amazed by what follows that gesture. The ice Jack walks on starts to rise from the river and form a glittering white staircase with broad, low, steps. Jack doesn’t look down at his construction, and each time he sets his foot to it he’s doing so in a place that was empty air only a few seconds before.

            He must have incredible powers of visualization to do that with no mental framework, and Sandy wonders if the king knows this, too. If he didn’t have to spend so much of his energy thinking about the basic form of what he wanted to do, he could potentially do so much more than even this already impressive display.

            Only a few steps away from the large open windows now, Jack offers the passengers a dazzling smile. So near, Sandy tries to look for any traces in his physical features that might offer some sort of clue about what kind of adept he would have been, had he been offered proper training and community. It’s terribly inexact, but what Jack’s doing doesn’t seem to be definitively linked to any class of adepts he’s ever known. If he could just have some time with Jack, there are a few different lights the boy could drink that should give Sandy an answer, but there’s no telling when or if that could ever happen.

            There’s nothing in his facial features that sets him apart from the vast majority of those born in the Lunar Kingdom. He’s pale as a shadow adept, but in a way that allows for a slight touch of pink on his cheeks and lips. Anyway, it’s clear that the magic he’s doing isn’t related to shadow at all. The white hair: Sandy distantly recalls seeing a few young air adepts with white hair, long ago, but if this had been related to their power he doesn’t know. At this distance Sandy can also see that Jack’s eyes are a pure, light blue, a shade that he generally associates with water adepts. If Jack is an untrained water adept, that would explain his ability to manipulate ice, and, yes, all sorts of weather, but water adepts don’t _do_ the kinds of things Pitch has told him Jack has done. Their powers are inward-focused. They heal the weaknesses of the body, they don’t cause blizzards. And how would a water adept have ended up in the Lunar Kingdom? Sandy knows that adept ability isn’t carried solely by blood (or at all, otherwise the light adepts wouldn’t have lasted more than a generation) but in the more than a century he spent in the mainland of the Lunar Kingdom, he’d never heard of a water adept being found anywhere outside of their scattered island lands.

            “Master Sandren, if I may,” North says to him, interrupting his train of thought, “I think it might be better for future if you appeared pleased to see young Frost.”

            Sandy blinks and shakes his head slightly as he releases his look of concentration and replaces it with a mild smile. As Jack alights on the windowsill and steps lightly into the room, Sandy can’t think of who would be noticing him—all the other guests seem drawn to him as iron is drawn to a lodestone, and as he walks near them, many make tentative, fragmentary motions toward him, wanting to touch but not quite daring. It’s more chilling than the wind Jack brings with him, and Sandy hopes, for Jack’s sake, that those he meets will continue to be afraid of him, at least for now.

            After some formal introductions and a speech by North that Sandy’s almost sure no one pays any attention to—except for maybe the secretary, and Sandy so wishes Pitch was here: he’d be able to see the man’s angle—Sandy finds himself sitting at a table with North, Jack, and one of Jack’s bodyguards. The guard remains impassive as he settles into the chair beside Jack, but Jack himself lets his smile, permanent up till now, slide off his face as he gracefully sits down in the chair that most faces away from the rest of the room.

            “It’s good to see you, North,” he says, bouncing one knee up and down. He turns to Sandy. “Mastern Sandren. It’s good to meet you too. I’ve missed your dreams since you came to the city. The king’s told me so much about you.”

            Sandy glances over at the bodyguard. “Please, call me Sandy. You know, the king hasn’t told me much of anything about you.”

            Jack’s face falls and he opens his mouth as if to speak. He glances from Sandy to North, and back again. His bodyguard glances at him. North sighs loudly. “One thing very remarkable about the guards the king assigns to Jack, Sandy, is their absolute loyalty to Jack first and foremost above anyone or anything else. Very admirable, no? And Jack, here is a philosophical puzzle for you: How much can truly be conveyed through the written word, say, in infrequent letters between an island and the mainland? Why, a reader might construct an entirely different persona for the writer than the writer truly possesses!”

            “That’s an interesting question,” Jack says, breaking one of the small cakes from the silver tray in the center of their table into little pieces and eating the crumbs one by one. “I don’t know how to answer it, though, my education hasn’t progressed that far. But now, I did hear something interesting—Sandy was at your party a few days ago. Sandy, if you don’t mind—How would you describe him there, North?”

            “Surprisingly—and gladly— _serene_ ,” North says.

            Sandy can’t resist interjecting here. “Though it was a very long time ago,” he says, looking from North to Jack, “in my youth I always found the use of the word ‘serene’ interesting, since it is also the name of the river that has so profoundly influenced this kingdom. I learned a saying about it, when I was a child.”

            “Children’s sayings a very enduring, even in very barbaric parts of the world, like those I come from.” North sits back and looks up at the ceiling, a thoughtful look on his face. “I wonder if perhaps we were taught the same saying about the river.”

            A waiter comes by and pours them all tea, leaving the pot behind. The same business goes on at the rest of the tables, and the room fills with the brittle clink and clatter of silver spoons against bone china as most everyone adds sugar to their tea.

            Under that noise, Jack says in a tone almost too low for Sandy to hear, “The king hasn’t spoken to me in weeks. He just sends me places. I don’t know if I’m being punished or what.”

            “Have you done anything the king would punish you for?”

            Jack shakes his head. “Not that I know of. But—North, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. When I make my public appearances, I don’t have the detailed instructions I used to. Am I supposed to understand all the court games now? No one tells me why I do the things I’m sent to do. I’m lost. I’m going to do something wrong without knowing it. And then what?” He adds milk to his own tea. “I’m just a kid. But I know that with the power I have—I can’t be free. The only safe place for me is with the king.

            “But it’s so—so difficult. A little over a year ago, all I knew was my own name. And now I’m meant to navigate the court? Alone?” His arms twitch forward, and, if Sandy had to guess, he’d say that Jack wanted to put his elbows on the table and rest his head in his hands. But that would be too obvious to the other tables. “Even if I had a lifetime’s worth of memories to draw on, I don’t think I’d be able to do that. I don’t have the focus. And when I know that, literally, I could fly away…”

            “Why don’t you do just that?” Sandy asks. “Surely the king does not dare chain you.” He calmly stirs his tea to cool it.

            “But—I—I’m dangerous,” he explains, “All my power has to do with ice. It’s winter…death. Until now the king’s accepted me, guided me. No one else would take me in if I left. Especially as—as a foreigner.”

            Sandy narrows his eyes. “Do you feel dangerous?”

            “Yes,” Jack whispers. “I want to use my powers all the time, and I could, without getting tired. It feels right. It makes me happy, no matter what else is happening. But most of what I can do is harmful.”

            “How often are you…called upon to demonstrate your powers?”

            “Once every few days.” Jack looks at Sandy with a great deal of puzzlement.

            “I see.” Sandy frowns slightly. It’s not good for Jack to think of his powers as separate from his everyday life, especially with how powerful he seems to be. His lack of training doesn’t help here, either. Whatever his adept element, he hasn’t been taught how to let it flow through him, to let it go and trust that it will be there when he needs it. “Jack, have you ever spoken to an adept other than me? Have you ever been outside the Lunar Kingdom?”

            Jack shakes his head. “Actually I’m surprised I’m even getting to talk with you. The king told me he had been writing to you asking if I could see you, but you hadn’t answered. So I—I thought you didn’t want to meet me.”

            Sandy can’t help but make a face. He wishes he had brought along the king’s most recent letters to see if that’s true. “Jack, I’m sorry. On the Isle of Dreams, nothing seems urgent.

            “Now, I may not know much about the current court, but I know enough about courts in general to think that this conversation may not be the best one to have here. I’ll be in the city for some time. I may not have the same magic as you, but I think there are at least a few things I can teach you about your power. Any time you are able to, come to the house in Fountain Square.”

            Jack blinks a few times. “I will—you’re really inviting me, to talk with you, about magic?”

            Sandy sips his tea. “You’re in the dark about a lot of things now, Jack. It’s not my nature to leave that be.”

            “Sandy, you have not been in the city in over ten years,” North interjects into the silence that follows. “Jack, why do we not tell him of the many new and wonderful changes that have taken place since his last visit?” His voice is a little too loud, and Sandy, though he doesn’t look too closely, swears he can see the secretary sit up straight from where he had been leaning toward their table.

 

            Before Sandy can successfully steer the conversation towards the Great Library, however, some unspoken signal seems to pass throughout the room and the rest of the guests begin to leave their tables to mingle again, all taking circuitous routes eventually leading to the table at which he, Jack, and North are sitting.

            North nods to him when the other guests stand. “I believe that you are the highest-ranking person here, Sandy. Shall we stand or remain seated?”

            “Let’s remain seated,” Sandy says. He finishes his latest cup of tea and glances about the room. “The paths they’re all working out look complicated enough already.”

            Jack smiles, and Sandy returns the smile with one of his own, even though, once again, he’s troubled. He’s never really thought about his rank before. In the days before the Dimming, light adepts had been officially outside of the rank system that ended with the king. When had he been bestowed with the rank he had now? He doesn’t remember having received any mark of it—unless perhaps the seal? For a moment, he longs for the island. He doesn’t want to have to pay attention to so many things. Even in the troubled days of his youth, after Pitch’s banishment and before the realized he wasn’t aging, life hadn’t seemed so complicated. He wonders how others manage it, and if it seems easier for them because they have never known anything else. Probably.

            The guests who come to their table mostly do not bother greeting Jack’s bodyguard. When Sandy notices, he glances at the guard to see if he seems bothered by that, but his expression remains doesn’t change and Sandy guesses that this isn’t an uncommon circumstance. Other aspects of this situation also seem to be normal to Jack, though overall he doesn’t appear to enjoy them.

            The difference in how the guests greet North, Jack, and Sandy is obvious and, as Sandy sees the stiffness in Jack’s shoulders increase as it goes on, begins to make him profoundly uncomfortable as well. North, they greet normally, with a brief, light touch of fingertips. When they greet Jack, the appear to begin to do the same thing, but every single guest holds their fingertips against Jack’s many times longer than they did for North, and many position their hands in such a way so that a greater amount of skin-to-skin contact is made. Two even successfully brush their whole palms against Jack’s, which not only looks awkward to Sandy, but, judging from North’s expression, is utterly inappropriate for this particular situation. The palm-brushers know that too, Sandy thinks, as they fill the air with comments about the weather or the upcoming autumn equinox festival, as if all these words could disguise the way in which all they are seeking at this time is more touch from Jack.

            Sandy, being a new variable, does not suffer from the attentions of the guests in the way that Jack does, but as soon as he doesn’t react (his mind still not yet accustomed to the new manners of the city) after someone presses their fingertips for a time just this side of far too long, they all start trying to do exactly that. Not one tries to engage any one of them in meaningful conversation. All they want are the dribs and drabs of magic they can gather through as much physical contact as they can manage.

            Sandy’s surprised by how dirty he feels after the guests have all made their rounds, the tea things have been taken away, and everyone is getting ready to leave. It doesn’t make any sense. Over the past few days he’s given pure light to anyone who had even the slightest interest in it, but in this closed space with only physical contact to serve as the conduit, he can’t stand the thought of his magic going out to any of these guests or, rather, supplicants.

            And he can tell it has, looking at them as they leave. They all seem a little livelier, a little brighter, a little louder, a little better-defined around the edges. The magic is something they all needed, and Sandy knows he shouldn’t want to keep it from them, but this particular situation seems all wrong. If they had asked for light he would have filled the teapots with the autumn afternoon, but none of them had asked. Or at least they hadn’t asked him.

            Jack’s practiced smile vanishes as the last of the guests leave and is replaced by a tired, anxious look. He holds his elbows tightly and hunches his shoulders forward. “I don’t _like_ this, North. They don’t see me. They just see…the ice.”

            North grips his shoulder comfortingly and glances briefly at Sandy.

            “Jack,” Sandy says quietly, “I can tell there are a lot of changes that need to be made. And I promise, change is coming. Even if I have to start prying up cobblestones and piling up furniture across the streets by myself.”

            “I believe you,” Jack says. A smile he didn’t use among the other guests begins to form on his face. “Do you still…want me to visit the house at Fountain Square?”

            Sandy nods. “Most definitely.”

            Jack and his bodyguards leave through the ordinary door with North and Sandy. A carriage with the royal seal on it waits for them in the street. As they leave, the details that stay in Sandy’s mind are the smudges of dirt he sees on the soles of Jack’s feet that appear as he climbs up the gilded steps.

 

            In the horseless carriage with North again, Sandy finds himself strangely calmer than he was before, and even calmer than he had been near the end of the tea. His stomach lurches only slightly, and he can focus enough to ask North two pressing questions.

            “North, what was that tea about? The other guests didn’t seem to have anything to do with you.”

            “The other guests were two types,” North explains. “One type: businesspeople who have not been quite in king’s good books. Other type: court people who would be advancing in hierarchy save for one or two little things they are not doing. I am in king’s good books, and I sit at the table with Jack Frost and Master Sandren. Jack Frost and you have what they know they need. Now they go home and think about that.”

            “Isn’t it dishonest to offer something that isn’t yours?” Sandy asks, frowning.

            “Yes. More so when you have no intention of actually giving it.” North answers. “Would be crude to define such an exchange, when the sacredness of Light is major topic of discussion. So nothing really took place today.”

            “So why are you a party to it?”

            “Because I trust myself more than I trust the others who might take my place. And Jack needs a friend. I need him too, I admit. But somehow I am sure I do not feel desperation like all the rest. Neither does my household.

            “You will be a better disinterested party, though.”

            North’s whole household wasn’t starving for magic? But how? Well, that mystery could be solved another day. Finally, Sandy asked the question he had intended to when he agreed to the invitation.

            “North, do you think you could look at two diagrams of a building, from different eras, and see where the differences were? There’s something we—that is, I’ve been looking for in the Tooth Palace—the building itself. I know it’s there, but with the maps the process of finding it would be a lot easier.”

            “I think it would be possible,” North says. “Does this have to do with the book theft?”

            Sandy remains silent, unsure what to say.

            “Hmm.” North strokes his beard. “Will the answer come with the changes you promised Jack?”

            “I hope so,” Sandy answers.

            They arrange a meeting time for tomorrow, and when Sandy alights from the vehicle and returns to the house on Fountain Square, he’s almost hopeful that change will come soon, as those who age would measure it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much foreshadowing. I hope I can address it all.
> 
> Gloverson. Eh? Eh? Sometimes I think I'm too much of a geek to be let out in public.
> 
> P.S. Did you catch Pitch's song allusion? Did you want to throw something at me if you did?


	11. A Light Apprentice Meets Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One door is opened in the present, two doors are opened in the past. We get to see what happened to Kozzy after he left the Luminous Academy on the morning of his initiation, and how he began to become a shadow adept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all better be done with your finals by now, this one's a long one.

            Pitch and Sandy stand in a small room on the ground floor of the Tooth Palace. “This place doesn’t look any different from the rest of the library,” Pitch says. Sandy nods, looking thoughtful. The room is made of the same warm stone as the rest of the building, lit by the same system of high interior windows and mirrors. The books on the shelves are mostly slim volumes, some very old, some very new. A small brass plaque outside the entryway informs them that the room contains the Charlo Hanvers Poetry Collection.

            The contents of the room are slightly unusual, given the rest of the organization of the Great Library—poetry is not usually stored in the Tooth Palace—but Toothiana had explained, leading Sandy there, that it was an artifact of trusts and donations before the major expansion of the library.

            “Well, when North looked at the plans, this is where he said he noticed the most obvious difference.” In his hands, Sandy holds a sheet of paper covered with North’s confident, clear lines.

 

When they had looked at the plans that morning, North had enthusiastically created several new plans and diagrams of the locations of any possible or definite discrepancies in the older and newer maps—using a pencil, of course: if he had taken out a pen in the reading room Toothiana would have eviscerated him with it. Afterwards, Sandy and North had returned to Fountain Square and North had inked the lines, labeling everything in a clear, mechanical hand.

            “This is something that should be done for every building in this city,” North had said. “I do not know exactly what you need this for, but is shocking how much the plans have changed. So much of this city is so old, must not just do surveys of buildings, must compare with oldest plans, they are here in the library, so why not? So much could be lost, and what of gas lines and what of pipes? What of any new construction? Modification? Is all being made based on what is known now, but what is known now is not what is really there. This is very dangerous, you know? If I did not know everything about my horseless carriage, down to every rivet, would be irresponsible. But who can know a city? Someone should. I do not know who. Would need very many people. I will ask—” he stopped drawing for a moment, and frowned. “This is what I would have asked the king about before I was given my fine house. Now there are too many problems to solve with people.”

 

            “It probably doesn’t look any different from the rest of the library because the people that used it—or are using it—don’t want anyone to notice anything. What North noticed was that this room is significantly smaller on the newer plans than it is on the older ones. So if it wasn’t a mistake in the scaling of the drawing, then is seems reasonable to me to think that’s something’s being hidden here. Can you sense any secrets here?”

            Pitch steps into the center of the room, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. He lets it out slowly, lifting his hands slightly away from his sides, moving his fingers slightly as if sifting the still, warm air of the room. “I can sense thousands of secrets here.” He opens his eyes and looks at Sandy. “Some of them even seem familiar. Whatever logic lies behind Charlo Hanvers’ collection, it seems to draw secrets like flames draw moths. I can’t separate any secret here that is linked to the walls themselves rather than the books.”

            “We’ll have to stick with the map and our minds, then,” Sandy says, examining the drawing and approaching one of the bookshelves. “If I call for revelation without knowing what I’m looking for, I might end up changing the text of the books.”

            Pitch looks over his shoulder at the map. If he’s reading it correctly, the shelf before them stands against a wall about three feet closer to the door than it was when the Tooth Palace was first constructed.

            “The shelf doesn’t move.” Sandy gestures at the floor. “No marks.”

            “Or at least it doesn’t swing outward,” Pitch says.

            “So we should just try pushing it inwards?” Sandy asks. “It couldn’t be that simple.”

            “That’s not what I meant,” Pitch says, as Sandy places his hand on the side of the shelf and gives it a light push.

            What Pitch did mean would forever go unsaid, as the shelf slides inward to a small, dark chamber, to the astonishment of them both.

            “It wasn’t even locked.” He peers over Sandy into the little room. “This can’t be it, Sandy. A page placing a book on the shelf with a bit more force than usual would open this by accident.”

            “Well, we ought to check, anyway.”

            Nothing about the space gives any indication that a secret passage continues from any point in the room. Sandy murmurs words of revelation as he traces his hands around the worn stones, but the light fades into the walls with only a few luminous curlicues.

            Pitch raises his eyebrows questioningly.

            “There are secrets here,” Sandy says, smirking. “But not the ones we’re looking for. The pages definitely know about this room.”

            “In the same way that we knew about certain alcoves in the Academy?”

            Sandy nods. “The only thing I can’t figure out, then, is why this space exists at all.” He backs out of the room and pulls the bookshelf back flush with the others. “Why would modifications be made to the library that limited shelf space? I mean, think of this huge campus. Space has always been a problem.”

            “It makes the room a perfect square.” Pitch shrugs. “When was this collection established, anyway? If it was in the time of the circular library maps, maybe some rooms were altered for geometrical reasons.”

            “Stars,” Sandy sighs. “If we have to deal with all the numerological peccadilloes of a few centuries ago, this is going to be a very, very long day.” He pulls out North’s diagrams again. Now that he’s looking at them, a lot of changes noted seem to be making the library look neater. A corner blocked off here, a curve straightened there. There are dozens of changes, and now none of them look like what they’re trying to find. Except…

            “Maybe we’re making this too complicated,” Pitch says, peering at the titles of the books of poetry. “The maps you got North to compare were both meant to be practical. The act of hiding books and removing them from the library was surely practical to someone. So perhaps something meant for practical purposes was simply repurposed to take the books.”

            “We are making this too complicated. Look.” The reading room on the new map doesn’t have many changes marked, but there is one, directly in the center. In the room containing the well, North has noted a square that had been indicated on the floor of the well house in the older map, but had been absent on the newer map.

            “Meaning of figure unclear,” North’s note said, “but definitely a deliberate mark.”

            “Even if the well house in the library isn’t connected to the moonpools, it would still need to be maintained.” Sandy folds the diagrams and begins to head out of the Charlo Hanvers room. “But as long as it works, it’s not something that the people in the library would be thinking about very much. Still, it’s _something_ that should have been included on the plan for the new gas lines. And I’m pretty sure it would have been, if it hadn’t been deliberately hidden at some time. Maintenance hatches shouldn’t be hidden—what good would that do anyone? It would only do anyone any good if something else needed to be hidden in the same place.”

 

            In the reading room well house, Pitch stands in the doorway, preventing interruption, and watches as Sandy once more traces his fingers over the stones, speaking softly in Shining. He reflects on the idea that no matter how long one lives, it cannot be rational to be jealous of a _wall_ , especially when what is being done to that wall would cause him considerable pain. But, then again, Shadow has never been overly concerned with rationality. He’s started to puzzle over whether Light has either, when Sandy exclaims and breaks the thread of his thoughts.

            “It’s not quite like the one at Broadhand Corner,” Sandy says, kneeling on the floor and beckoning Pitch over. “That one didn’t look like it had been opened since the rest of the stones were laid. But here, see that crack? It’s a keyhole. And, yes, the whole floor is full of cracks, but,” he traces out a square with sides a little longer than his outstretched arm, “you can see that these actually form a complete circuit. It matches up to the square on the older map.”

            “Do we need a key?”

            “Technically, no.” Sandy looks at Pitch. “Practically, yes. When I opened the trapdoor at Broadhand, there wasn’t anything as sensitive as history books nearby. And even though light magic isn’t primarily about change like fire magic, I don’t want to put the kind of power that goes into moving heavy stone into the library. The possibility for unintended consequences is too great.”

            “You might end up merely giving some students the flashes of insight they need to solve their research problems,” Pitch says, settling to the floor and running his finger around the cracks that form the edges of the trapdoor. The breaks are in the mortar, not the stone, and, despite what Sandy said earlier, Pitch doesn’t think this was ever meant to be used for regular maintenance—just like the one at Broadhand.

            “Or I might end up irreversibly changing damaged or falsified records that are important to real history because of the way they’ve been damaged or falsified. Why do you insist on tempting me to use my power in ways that I shouldn’t? Trust me, Pitch. When it’s time, I’ll shake the city as it’s meant to be shaken.”

            “I just love the idea of you being terrifying,” Pitch says. “I want everyone to know it.”

            “I can’t think of anything that would be more against our immediate interests,” Sandy says, though his frown is not quite as stern as he knows it should be.

            “So it will be for our interests in time? Very well.” Pitch reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of lock-picking tools.

            Sandy looks surprised.

            “What? Did you think that shadow adepts always relied on magic to get into places they weren’t expected? Being able to be unnoticed by guards doesn’t mean that you’ll be unnoticed by a door. And we were never assumed to be law-abiding citizens anyway.”

            “But after centuries? You’re still carrying them around?”

            “This is the twentieth set, or so.” Pitch leans very close to the crack that Sandy’s identified as the keyhole, closing one eye and squinting with the other, trying to get a good look at what kind of lock it is.”

            “Oh.” Sandy pauses, as if debating whether to continue to speak or not. “I just thought that…by now…you’d gone beyond that.”

            “Hmm? Are you referring to my appearing in Fountain Square a few days ago?”

            Sandy hadn’t been—it had seemed so natural at the time—but he nods anyway.

            “That was different. I had been inside the house before, and I knew there was plenty of space in the shadows. Here, I’ve no idea what’s on the other side of this stone.” He selects a long, thin tool with a small zig-zag on the end and slides it carefully into the keyhole. “Still, maybe I should be able to compensate for that. But I’m not. I didn’t have the time and space you did, Sandy. I spent too much of my centuries trying to survive, rather than learning how to do impossible things.” He lies down on the cold floor, bending an ear toward the keyhole as he makes minute movements with the lock pick. “There’s just a little give…” he mutters. “Not really a lock, just a difficult switch…maybe.” He reaches over to his toolkit and selects the thickest pick that can still fit into the crack. He glances up at Sandy. “If this breaks, your magic has got to open this door. So close, I can tell there’s something really important hidden on the other side.”

            “Let’s just hope it doesn’t break,” Sandy says. He watches as Pitch works the pick into the lock and, when it’s gone in as far as it will with ease, Pitch presses down on it as firmly as he can, using the leather case that holds the set of picks to shield his hand.

            The pick moves down another half-inch, and with what seems like a deafening grinding noise, the stone square rises slowly out of the floor.

            When it stops—the stone piece moved being nearly a foot thick—Sandy and Pitch can see the darkness beneath peeping out from the crack between the stone hatch and the rest of the floor. As Pitch stands up and brushes himself off, Sandy nudges one side of the block, then another. The third side he presses causes the stone to swing slightly to one side, and as he continues pushing it, it rotates until it’s mostly over the floor of the well chamber, revealing both a stone staircase and the mechanism that raised it.

            “Steel,” Sandy notes. “Looking like that, it certainly isn’t original to the library. Well.” He turns to Pitch. “Shall we?”

            “People in the library are going to come down here for water,” Pitch points out. “Do we want them to see a mysterious dark passageway that’s suddenly opened in the floor?”

            Sandy begins to reply that he doesn’t care at all, let them see it. This entrance was marked on the original plans, after all. It shouldn’t be a secret. Then he remembers the delicacy of his current situation. Whether it should be a secret or not, it has been for quite some time. And with the sense he’s gotten of city politics so far, it probably wouldn’t be good to throw around a significant piece of information so freely. “Can you make it so people don’t notice it?” he asks Pitch instead.

            “If I put enough magic into the spell so that no one trips over it either, other parts of the library could be affected.”

            “We’ll go down, then, and see if there’s a way to close it from the inside,” Sandy declares.

            Pitch frowns slightly, but nods.

            They descend the steps. Unlike the ones they had encountered on the eve of Pitch’s initiation into shadow, these are scuffed and worn in their centers, though the wear still does not seem to correspond to regular use over its great age as other signs show. When Pitch’s head passes below the level of the floor, he looks up and finds a deep rectangular indentation five or six inches wide carved into the underside of the moveable section. “Sandy,” he says, “I think I’ve found a handle. Are you sure about this?”

            “Of course I’m sure,” Sandy replies, from a few steps below him. He’s already called the light-mark on his forehead to life, and Pitch can see the spark of eager curiosity in his eyes thanks to its gentle glow.

            “But what if we’re wrong? What if this wasn’t on the new map not because it was hidden, but because it was disused? What if that tunnel doesn’t go anywhere—and the door locks behind us?”

            Sandy sobers only slightly. “Pitch, please don’t worry! There’s no lock that can hold me, as long as I have even a little strength left with my magic and the lock is ordinary. And this one seemed very ordinary as we passed it.”

            “You—you can’t replenish your magic down here,” Pitch says, still hesitating. “Not if there’s an emergency.”

            “But I’m with you,” Sandy smiles. “And you can.”

            _He’s not wrong_ , Pitch thinks, as he easily pulls the block over and down, again with a horrible drawn-out grinding noise. Dust falls upon his hair and sleeves, and as he brushes it off, he keeps the corner of one eye on Sandy’s light and tells himself he has nothing to worry about. Sandy isn’t facing this lightless world the way he first did, all those years ago.

 

***

 

            Kozzy stared grimly at the riotous sunset before him. He’d ridden and walked alongside the horse— _the stolen horse_ , his mind whispers, _they’d be well within their rights to whip you now_ —since before dawn.

            When the sun had risen, he hadn’t been far from the Luminous Academy, and, with the image of Sandy waking up and finding him gone refusing to leave his mind, he’d spurred the horse onward for its only gallop of the day, knowing that he had to get away from the Academy, that he needed time, the one thing they would not give him on the day of his intended initiation; yet feeling as though he was slowly cutting his heart out with every strike of a horseshoe on the wide, pale road. He had buried his face in the horse’s mane to not see that road ahead of him, so that for a few heartbeats he could pretend he was going back to the place where, for just shy of twelve years, he’d always believed he belonged.

            If the black mare, upon slowing her pace, felt her mane wetter than it had been before her dawn run, she gave no sign of it.

            The gallop had cracked some of the scabs on his back, and feeling blood and serum begin to ooze into his undershirt made him feel both disgusted and bone weary. He had no idea when he would be able to rest and wash again, and only an hour or two into his journey, he needed both. He slumped in the saddle as comfortably as he could, which wasn’t very, and gazed dully ahead, his eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare. He didn’t know how long he would need the horse to carry him, so he let her set the pace, only directing her enough to keep her moving mostly steadily down the road.

            As the sun crept up toward noon, he led the horse off the road and into a nearby meadow. He dismounted and stepped away from the mare, letting the sunlight pour down around him. The horse placidly cropped grass, glancing at Kozzy with disinterest when he stripped himself bare to the waist.

            He laughed—joylessly, madly—as the sun edged toward its zenith. One particularly harsh laugh sent him into a coughing fit, and he reached for the canteen attached to the saddle before remembering that he hadn’t brought any water, hadn’t brought any food, hadn’t brought anything, so urgent had been his need to get away. He brought his hand to his mouth instead and bit his forefinger, trying to calm himself, trying to breathe deeply. His efforts brought tears to his eyes, and in seconds his coughing was replaced by wracking sobs.

            He should have been standing before the masters right now! The full chorus of every light adept should have been echoing in his ears as all prepared to gather the solstice light that would seal him and the other apprentices in his year as full adepts. But he couldn’t—he couldn’t have stayed! He couldn’t have stood in line with the others, the others Light had never betrayed. Sun and Moon! What would they do with his new white robe?

            He fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around his slender frame, feeling himself take huge breaths, not sure if he was whimpering, heaving, or trying to scream. The horse snorted at him and he laughed giddily like breaking glass. _This was it. This was it_. He managed to hold himself mostly still, and from the corner of his eyes he watched the sun pass through noon and begin its long descent towards night. As the moment slipped away, he sank to the ground with a groan, curling his body tightly as he lay on his side. His breathing had slowed, and for nearly a minute he thought he felt himself growing calmer.

            Soon enough, though, the irrevocability of his actions burst through the flimsy dam his mind had struggled to throw up.

            Noon was gone. Solstice noon. His intended initiation noon. He could never be a light adept now. Not like the others. Never in all his apprenticeship had he seen a delayed initiation. He had chosen…chosen to reject _Light_. Light, that had chosen him. It didn’t seem possible. Surely, surely this must be a nightmare? But if this was a nightmare, he didn’t think it was one that could be soothed by his waking at the Luminous Academy anymore.

            He keened weakly. How was this possible? How could Light let him go? He wasn’t more powerful than Light! He was nothing more than a failed apprentice. Failed, incomplete, dimmed. The words echoed through his skull.

            When they stilled, he heard the faint whisper of a new thought: _You have rejected Light. You have done what they say no one can do. You are powerful. You are free._

            He shook his head violently, and the rest of his body followed. He didn’t feel powerful. He didn’t feel free. In this field, with only a horse for company, he was alone as he had never been in his entire life.

            He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, shivering despite the Summer’s heat, his slowly-healing back exposed to the solstice sun. When he pushed himself to his feet and put on his stained shirt, he had thought the angle of the light indicated some hours after noon, but that did not feel right. The mare was drinking from a small stream in the meadow when he shuffled over to her, and he bent down to it gratefully, though as he did he realized he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to rise again.

            He wouldn’t have been able to without the solid dumb presence of the horse.

            For the rest of the afternoon, they had walked slowly down the road, passing one little town, then another. Despite the heat, he put on the light cloak he had thought to bring with him— _why this?_ he wondered as he adjusted it on his shoulders, _why this instead of food or water?—_ at the first sign of human habitation.

            As he fastened the wooden clasp at his neck, he frowned. He shouldn’t pretend to himself that he didn’t know. He had taken the cloak because it would hide him, help him disappear. He pulled the hood up over his head and again took the horse’s reins loosely in one hand, while his other rested on her shoulder. Now they could pass safely, without question. Kozzy thought his hand still looked too golden against the horse’s black hair, but—and here he clenched the reins—his skin would never have that true, impossible-to-disguise shine like a Master’s. Like Sandy’s. If anyone saw him, he could pretend to be ordinary. No one would be looking for a rogue light apprentice, anyway. Rogue light apprentices just didn’t happen. Every single true light adept and apprentice would be at the Solstice Welcome.

            The only thing that might give him away would be his hair. He reached up to adjust the hem of the hood to make sure it covered every last strand. Again, while it didn’t shine quite like a light adept’s, it was well on its way to that point. And no one with hair that color, looking otherwise like a Selenean, was anything other than marked by Light.

            Belatedly, as he walked away from the Solstice Welcome, leaving behind foot-trails rather than prints as his feet rarely left the ground, he remembered his eyes. They were still gold, were they not? _Well. I can always pull the hood lower_. He wasn’t planning on looking anyone in the eye today, anyway.

            When he passed through the first town, no one was in the streets. At first, the apparent desertion made him uneasy, but as he watered his horse at the public trough, memories of the solstices of his childhood began to return to him, and he unclenched his teeth. On the summer solstice, no work was done during the day. Now, while the sun was still high in the sky, the whole town was probably napping in the sunlight with the possessions they wished to be blessed in the coming year.

            The mare stopped drinking and he softly stroked her neck. He wished he knew more about taking care of horses. His flight was surely causing enough pain already without exhausting or injuring an innocent animal.

            They walked out of town and, feeling her strength beside him, he hoped he was right in thinking that, the way he was now, he wouldn’t be able to make her do anything she didn’t want to do. He scoffed at himself. Of course he wouldn’t be able to make her do anything she didn’t want to do. He could barely make himself do what he needed to do.

            After the second town, he started to become preoccupied with the fact that he had not eaten anything since the previous evening, and even that had not been much. The Solstice Welcome always included so much feasting that all the meals provided the day before were quite light.

            With the sunlight pouring down and fields stretching away as far as he could see from either side of the road, lushly green yet barren of human life, Kozzy considered that he could gather light here with no one knowing—just a little, for strength. He walked a few steps more. He shouldn’t do that. Light wasn’t meant to be a substitute for food. Sometimes apprentices or adepts were caught doing that, and they usually vanished into the infirmary for a long time afterward. He entered the broad shadow of a huge oak tree, the roots of which threatened to throw the smooth road into chaos. He shouldn’t gather light now. Maybe he couldn’t. He had always gathered light with other apprentices or adepts before. He couldn’t sing the harmonies on his own.

            Then again, the light adepts who lived apart from the others in small towns throughout the kingdom could not sing the harmonies either, and they had no trouble gathering light.

            _But they’re adepts. I’m not_.

            He continued arguing with himself, taking one step, and one step, and another. During one pause in his mental debate, he realized that nothing else rushed in to fill the silence in his mind, so he did not resume it. The silence, for now, was more important than food, or rest, or light.

            Eventually, he realized he wasn’t moving forward nearly fast enough to be out of the range of any search for him that might take place after the solstice. Clumsily, but without falling, he heaved himself back into the saddle. The movement made him lightheaded, and again, he could tell it had done nothing good for his back.

            Now, as the longest day of the year finally drew to a close, Kozzy found himself staring into the sunset, his mind roiling with emotions that he was too exhausted to name or process in any way as he and the horse arrived in yet another town. A few people were out and about now, crowns of paper flowers on their heads, carrying dishes of food, spare chairs and tables, or the logs all twined in goldenbell vine that would crown the bonfires waiting to be lit as soon as the sun vanished below the horizon. He dully supposed they all had celebrations with their families to attend, and soon enough he would be left standing alone in the town unless he left, soon, once again. Was this how it was going to be? Forever? Panic started to distinguish itself from his undifferentiated mass of emotions as he let the horse take them to a public trough at the edge of the town square, in front of the local inn.

            All his skills were that of a light adept, yet he would never be a light adept. All he knew of the world outside the Academy was that which a ten-year-old child would know. He slid off the horse as she drank, resting his head against the side of her neck, trying to keep his breathing calm. Alone and having to hide who he had been, Kozzy could all too easily see himself dying of starvation or exposure. This would make things much simpler for many people, but when he started to think of Sandy’s reaction to such news he had to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep from crying out. When he removed his hand, he discovered he had bitten his knuckles hard enough to break the skin, and hadn’t noticed.

            The shock of the cold water from the pump at one end of the trough that he used to wash his hand temporarily invigorated him, and several possibilities for his next course of action, followed by their dismissals, raced through his mind. He could return to his family. No, he was a disgrace. He had been their greatest hope, and he had failed them. He could hire out as a laborer. No, who would hire a scrawny young man who refused to remove his cloak or look anyone in the eye? He could beg in the City of the Moon until Sandy found him. Sandy would know what to do. He had lived in the world. But wouldn’t Sandy shun him now? And he shouldn’t beg, surely there were other things he could do, after all it wasn’t like Sandy was going to want to touch him again anyway—but no! No! Even that would never do: his hair, eyes, skin all needed to remain concealed. There was nothing he could do.

            In his panic he did not consider his glassblowing skills or fine baritone voice as things separate from the rest of his light apprentice skills and able to be used outside of the Academy.

            In the fading light he looked out into the square and noticed that some of the commotion around him was stemming from various people moving long tables into a loose ring around a central bonfire. So there was to be a public celebration tonight, was there? If it was large enough, maybe he could get some food without attracting attention. He turned to the inn with more interest, now, and noticed that it had a fairly large stable attached to it. Perhaps he could trade the horse for a night’s stay? He suspected she was worth more than that, but he didn’t know how much and it wasn’t exactly as if he could bargain. Anyway, it would be better for her to be left behind. Surely any person picked at random in the town would know more about taking care of horses than he.

            Without her, as well, his crime of horse theft would not be so immediately obvious.

 

            In the stables, however, things immediately started going south. The stableboy had gone to fetch the innkeeper quickly enough, but as soon as Kozzy had stated what he hoped to receive in exchange for the horse, the man had grown suspicious. Apparently his asking price was far too low.

            “Anything wrong with her?” The man barked, peering narrowly at Kozzy’s hooded cloak.

            “No, no,” he replied, and then, honestly, “I don’t know.”

            “Don’t know! What sort of fellow are you, anyway? Maybe you’re a swindler! Horse looks fine, yes, but smart, too! Bet she’s one to slip out of the stable and run back to you as soon as you’re gone!”

            Kozzy hastened to deny this, too, but even as he did so the innkeeper stepped up closer to him, forcing him to retreat into the last of the sunlight or be knocked off his feet. He anxiously pulled his hood lower, sensing in the man a desire for revelation that was almost impossible to deny in his weakened state. He was seriously considering just giving in when a voice from an unseen speaker interrupted the proceedings.

            “We’ll buy the horse.” The voice was masculine, slightly raspy, and one of the most welcome sounds Kozzy had heard in his life. He carefully peered under the edge of his hood to see who had spoken, and saw, standing in a shaded part of the stable, a man and a woman. They both had black hair, and they looked like they hadn’t been out in the sun all summer, or maybe ever. And they weren’t just pale. There was something about how they were pale…Pitch mentally shook himself. Surely what he had just thought couldn’t be true. They looked so ordinary otherwise, and they were doing him a kindness.

            The innkeeper looked at the pair in surprise. “Well, if you want to throw your money away, I won’t stop you. You’re staying at my inn, after all!” He waved dismissively at the group and hurried off, no doubt to busy himself with preparations for the feast.

            As soon as he was gone, the woman spoke to Kozzy. “Young man, you don’t need to sell that horse. What you need is to sit and rest—and I suspect a good meal wouldn’t go amiss.”

            Kozzy began to protest feebly, but a loud growl from his stomach interrupted him and he ducked his head in embarrassment.

            “Come now,” said the woman. “We’ll leave the horse in the stables. She’ll be fine.”

            “I—I have nothing to pay with,” Kozzy said quietly.

            The man and woman looked at each other. “I think a good deed on the solstice is nothing to marvel at,” the man said. “Please, don’t worry about it. I’m sure your conversation will be enough.”

 

            That evening the dining room of the inn was mostly empty as most favored the celebration and bonfire outside. Only a few partygoers wandered in at a time, seeking quiet for a minute or two, and bringing the heady scent of burning goldenbell with them as they did. Only Kozzy and the man and woman stayed inside as the night went on, eating from plates filled from the bounty of the laden tables outside.

            “Thank you so much for this,” Kozzy said, looking up from his meal at the couple. His head felt clearer after eating something, his mind calmer. “I’m so sorry though. I just realized I haven’t asked your names—” He realized what he was saying and took a large bite of buttered bread to stop himself from saying anything further. _Fool! Asking their names means you need to offer your own!_

            “That’s all right,” said the woman, and Kozzy felt his shoulders untense slightly. “You don’t need to tell us your name if you don’t want to.” The tension returned tenfold.

            Kozzy forced himself to choke down his bite of bread. “But I didn’t…say…anything…about that.”

            “I think it is time we told you our names,” the man said. “I am called Kage.”

            “And I am called Skia,” said the woman.

            “Our parents never gave us these names,” Kage said.

            “And we both well know that you consider your name now a great secret. As well as much else about yourself.”

            “You’re…shadow adepts,” Kozzy whispered. “But the sun—the solstice!”

            “And why should we not be here?” Skia asked. “The sun shines every day and still we are here. And on the solstice, we have nothing to worry about from encounters with the light adepts, since they are all at their academy.”

            “But…” _Light adepts cannot cause harm_. Kozzy couldn’t make himself say it. He couldn’t make himself say anything. At the Academy, shadow adepts were little more than stories to frighten young apprentices with. Liars, cheats, assassins, thieves. Like pirates or highwaymen, but without even their glamour, for pirates and brigands, no matter how fierce and horrible, could be envisioned gloating among their ill-gotten finery in a suitably lurid red sunset, the sunlight setting the stolen jewels all a-glitter. Kozzy felt a sudden pang as he realized that image came directly from a story Sandy had told him and some of the other first-years one fine moonlit night.

            He pushed the thought away. No, shadow adepts were not part of those stories, for they sailed no turquoise seas, nor did the light of dawn glace sharply off their rapiers. They were forever consigned to the empty nothingness of darkness. So uncanny and incomprehensible were their powers as adepts that it was difficult to even place them into stories.

            “But we do not think of you often,” Kozzy finished lamely.

            “We?” repeated Kage, smirking at Skia.

            Skia sighed. “Young stranger, even wrapped in a cloak you do but a poor job of concealing yourself. Remove your hood and unburden yourself of one of the many secrets that hang about your mind.”

            Reluctantly, Kozzy obeyed. Hair and face revealed, he felt better in the part of his soul through which Light flowed, but only consternation in the self that dealt with the world.

            Both Kage and Skia inhaled sharply, and quickly spoke to each other in a language that made Kozzy feel as though insects were crawling over his skin. This went on for as long as Kozzy could bear, until, helplessly, he begged them to stop. “Please, please! No more Murkish! I can’t—”

            “The proper name is Erebusian.” Kage spoke in common Selenean.

            Kozzy shivered and rubbed his arms.

            “We have never seen a light adept out in the kingdom during the summer solstice,” Skia said. “I did not expect this even after your slip. But this does explain why you hold your secrets so uneasily.”

            “I’m not…a light adept,” Kozzy admitted, staring down at the food cooling on his plate. “I…no! Why should I tell you anything?”

            “We will keep your secrets.” Skia took a small sip of her watered-down wine. “And even if we did not, who in all the world would trust the word of a shadow adept?”

            “Today was going to be my initiation day.” Kozzy felt ten thousand more words heaving up behind those few. “But it—it wasn’t right.” Despite the pressure of the words, he fell silent again.

            Skia and Kage waited patiently for him to continue.

            For what seemed like decades, he wasn’t sure if he would. Shadow adepts were untrustworthy. Dangerous. Violent. _But_ , his mind protested, _that is what you were taught at the Academy. You have never seen a shadow adept before today, and they have been none of those things._ He shifted slightly on the wooden bench, adjusting the cloak so that it would press his shirt against his skin less. _And you’re marked with the bloody evidence that Light and its adepts are not exactly as they had taught you either._

            “I don’t know where to begin,” Kozzy said. “I’m not sure if I want to begin anything. I just want time to think. I’m sorry if that makes my company not worthwhile. I don’t even know if I should be afraid of you or not.”

            “You need not fear us,” Skia said, with the air of someone who has said the same thing many times before. “Light and Shadow may be opposed, but we are calling upon neither at this moment. If anything, we should fear you.”

            “Why?” Kozzy asked, now regaining enough composure to begin eating again.

            “As shadow adepts, all light is at least a little bit dangerous to us,” Kage explained. “You aren’t a full adept, but you still have the power of light within you. If you touched any part of our bare skin with yours, you’d burn us.”

            “I wouldn’t be able to touch you at all, then,” Kozzy said. “My hand would glance away from the touch.”

            “Don’t be so sure.” Kage glanced at Skia, who nodded. “We have legends in which light adepts have harmed shadow adepts, both by accident and intentionally.”

            “Why would they do that? They wouldn’t be able to remain light adepts afterwards!”

            “In the legends they do,” Kage said, unperturbed by Kozzy’s affronted tone.

            “It seems,” Skia said, “that shadow adepts might be the exception to the rule enforced by Light itself for its conduits not to cause harm.”

            Kozzy dropped his knife and fork with a clatter. He moved his mouth, but no sound escaped. He moved his mouth in the same pattern again. “What did you say?” His words were barely audible over the noise of the celebration outside.

            “I am certain you heard.” Skia looked at him with renewed curiosity. “Is this at the heart of another of your secrets?”

            “I think—I don’t know—please,” Kozzy said. He started to shiver. “Please—this may sound strange—can we go somewhere that’s not in public? I—” he felt himself starting to cry again, but he didn’t care. If there were things worth crying about in this world, surely the possibility and uncertainty blooming in his mind were included among them.

 

            In Kage and Skia’s room at the inn, Kozzy undid his cloak with shaking hands, revealing his stained shirt. The two shadow adepts were silent as he turned his back to them, and for that he was grateful. Despite bearing wounds that stung all the more for their injustice, he felt he could not bear to hear shadow adepts passing judgment on what Light would allow. His face burned with shame as he removed his shirt so that the full extent of his injuries could be seen. It seemed wrong, showing the result of so intimate an act of Light to shadow adepts, but Kozzy had fought for his wounds, and they had to see, didn’t they? In case what they said was true. In case it meant that Kozzy was really a—

            “How did you come by such marks?” Kage asked, his voice level. “The light adepts I have seen seem to float above any situation that would lead to such a result.”

            Before he could stop himself, Kozzy began to babble out his story, though for reasons he couldn’t define, left out anything involving Sandy. When he was finished, a few questions from Skia forced him to go back and explain what the Mercy of the Light was.

            “Cover your ears,” she said once he ceased to talk for the second time. She and Kage then proceeded to have a rapid-fire conversation in Murkish—no, _Erebusian_ , Kozzy thought to himself as he clapped his hands over his ears.

            When they were done and Kozzy had uncovered his ears, Kage handed him a spare shirt from his bag. “You’re not bleeding now, and you should wash the other before you wear it again. Now, to speak bluntly. You’re afraid that you might be suited to shadow based on the fact that light adepts were able to do this to you. Is that right?”

            Kozzy nodded, gratefully pulling on the clean garment.

            “Do you want to know if you are?” asked Skia.

            “What would happen once I knew?”

            “You could be trained as a shadow adept,” she said, raising her eyebrows as she watched the color leave Kozzy’s face. “There’s no need to look so terrified. You won’t be made to do anything you don’t want to do.”

            “It would mean giving up the light,” Kozzy whispered. “I’m not afraid of what I might have to do. I’m afraid of all the things I wouldn’t be able to do anymore. I’d be giving up my whole life.”

            “You’d gain a new one.” Kage folded his arms. “And it wouldn’t exactly be your very unique issue, giving up your life to become a shadow adept. In this kingdom, we all give up our former lives when we embrace shadow.”

            “Then why do it?”

            “No doubt you felt you could not resist Light when it chose you,” Skia said. “Shadow is much the same.”

            Kozzy sat down on one of the room’s two beds and rested his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

            “Well, if you wish to find out if you are suited to shadow, you will have some time to think about that, and nothing else—no practicalities.” Skia glanced at Kage, who nodded.

            “What? Why?”

            “Because normally the test of one’s suitability for Shadow, like the test of suitability for Light, requires touch. And I’d prefer not to risk injuring myself on your skin, oh young light apprentice. But there are other ways. Before beginning training, every apprentice undergoes an ordeal. For them, it’s just a formality. The other shadow adepts know that they’ll pass. For you, it would be a real test. It’s something that can only be done at one of the locations where shadow adepts are trained. It will take us some days to get there. We would give you food and shelter on the way.”

            “What if I fail?”

            “Then, light apprentice, our aid would have to take on a different form. But now, I think you should rest. You have travelled a long way today, with no destination.”

            “Oh, but—where?”

            “Stay where you are,” Kage said. “Skia and I will share the other bed when we return from the festival.”

            “But what will the innkeeper think?”

            “Not that you’re a light apprentice where no light apprentice should be,” Skia pointed out. “Now sleep. You need it.”

           

            Kozzy woke at dawn, and, to his surprise, so did Kage and Skia.

            “Normally, we don’t do this,” Kage said, pausing as he washes his face to yawn hugely. “But when we travel to places that do not know us, we strive to follow the common custom.”

            “Not to mention that it is far easier for us to travel when the sun is low.” Skia checked to make sure they had gathered all their things and began to pick up the bags, waving off Kozzy’s offer to help.

            “Are you…interrupting your other business here to take me to the shadow place?” Kozzy asked. “I wish you wouldn’t, after all, I just showed up out of nowhere…”

            “Huh.” Skia tossed the last, heaviest bag to Kage. “On the summer solstice, as well as the equinoxes, we shadow adepts drink the fundamental shadow, that rests where light has never fallen. Yes, shadow can be drunk too, Kozzy. Did you think it was like sand or smoke? The fundamental shadow calls to itself. That, and with the knowledge that any indication that one is suitable for shadows is doubtless kept a secret, allows us to find potential shadow adepts. That’s what we were doing in this town. Since you will take the test, we think you are the one we were called to find.” She heads down the stairs, followed by Kozzy first, then Kage. “Then again, maybe your secrets are just cluttering our perceptions. If you don’t pass the test, we’ll have to come back here once more.”

            “It would be our first time not finding a shadow apprentice where the shadow called,” Kage said, “So with our record, you can be fairly confident you’re not going to fail. We always find the right person.”

            “I don’t know if I want to be the right person,” Kozzy said

            “Huh.” Skia said again. “That’s something for the test to decide.” She saddles a study chestnut horse and starts to strap bags to the saddle as Kage pets the horse’s nose and brings it some feed.

            A larger gray gelding waited for Kage, and in the midst of preparing it for a long journey, he looked over at Kozzy. “Aren’t you going to ready the mare you tried to sell to us yesterday?”

            “She’s not really mine,” Kozzy said, looking down.

            “So what?” Skia double-checked her knots and buckles. “You’re going to see if you can become a shadow adept. That’s worse than horse thievery in this kingdom. Anyway, you don’t want to leave a trail, do you?”

 

            For four days they rode south, setting a leisurely pace, leaving the hottest, brightest parts of the day for rest. The nocturnal lifestyle wore on Kozzy, and he spoke little to Skia and Kage during the journey. The pair did not press him for conversation, and for this he was grateful, though he did not know whether they left him be out of courtesy for his particular situation or because of some shadow adept custom of valuing silence.

            Later, he had few clear memories of those particular days. He remembered the feel of the saddle beneath him, collapsing onto a borrowed blanket in midmorning under the shade of some tree, and how bruised and sore his legs had become. The days do not separate themselves one from another in his mind. He remembered Kage advising him how to stretch. He remembered Skia building a cooking fire with ease. The moments were all disconnected. Mostly, what he remembered were emotions, building and ebbing as inexorably as the tide, with gray intervals of numbness between that he grew to abhor after even those few days.

            He hurt. He curled in on himself, hunching over as they rode, unsure of where his physical pain ended and the pain flowing from his mind and heart began. He dwelled on finding the transition point, for if he did not, his thoughts would begin to circle around the fact that soon he would be discovering if he was suited for shadow or not. If the past twelve years of his life, twelve years spent on a path he had loved with all his heart, had merely come about due to some cosmic error. If that cosmic error was the only thing that had led him to meet Sandy. Sandy, Sandy! He tried to comfort himself by telling himself that Sandy was so inextricably bound to Light that he could not have made a mistake in loving him, but the thought did not fill the hollow within him that grew ever deeper as they approached the place of the test.

            Perhaps Sandy had been right to love him. But what if he was suited to shadow anyway? If he became a shadow adept, he and Sandy could never touch again. He could never touch any of the light adepts again. Sandy had been his lover, but the others had been important too, brothers and sisters to him.

            And how could he be suited to shadow anyway? Though brewing the dream had led to where he was now, he had done it, and Sandy had said it had been wonderful. Only those chosen by Light could do that.

            But if he wasn’t suited to shadow, then what would he do? He had come to a better understanding of the practical skills he possessed, having had time to think more calmly than before, but such understanding did not comfort him as much as he thought it would. Something in him rebelled against the very thought of living cut off from his sense of Light, of magic. And wasn’t that why he was going to take this shadow test after all? He could not stay with the light adepts after what they had done, but he could no more separate himself from magic than he could separate himself from his soul. The powers of Shadow might be opposed to those of Light, but they were at least not the absence of power.

            And if he was suited to shadow, at least he would have a community within which to practice.

            During one day’s fitful rest, he woke from his sleep with the realization that if he was not suited to shadow he would have no choice but to become an outlaw light almost-adept. The thought was awful—a light worker with no community—but he could see no alternative. He might have willingly watched the Academy fall, but he could not give up the practice of magic entirely. In Light he had touched upon one of the fundamental forces that shaped the world, and no matter what the others who had shared his experience did, he could not relinquish it.

            And what if Shadow claimed him yet more strongly? The thought kept him awake till Skia and Kage woke in the late afternoon.

 

            On the last night of their journey, he remembers looking up at the stars as they rode. Skia had told him that they would reach the place of the test just before dawn. “You may wait a day before entering the place of the test,” she had said, “but it will make no difference.”

            “Make no difference to who?” he had asked.

            “Anyone who isn’t you,” she had answered. “And, perhaps, not even to you. I cannot say. Even the longest days are but small fragments of a whole life.”

            Now, his eyes on the stars, Skia was the one to ask him a question. “What are you thinking about, Kozzy?”

            “The night. The stars. No matter how dark the night, the stars are always there…I suppose I was finding a little comfort in it. That for all night is associated with darkness, it’s really full of light. It makes me feel as though it’s impossible to really be separated from Light, no matter what happens.”

            In the dark, he could tell Skia had turned toward him, but he couldn’t read her expression. “We will reach the place of the test in about three hours,” she said. “When we arrive, it will be time for you to enter, unless you have decided to wait a day. Take this time to think. Whatever decision you make, it will be better for you if it is a decision.”

            “What is the test, exactly?” Kozzy asked. “Is it…dangerous?”

            “The test is a secret,” Skia said. “But, ultimately, Shadow will claim you or it will not. I have never thought of it as dangerous, but no one so near to becoming a light adept has ever taken it.”

 

            They arrived at their destination after having ridden single file down a heavily wooded path that Kage had led them onto from the main road. As they had gone farther into the forest, Kozzy had noticed that his horse’s hooves clacked against stone more and more often, and so when they reached a faintly moonlit clearing formed by a rocky outcropping, the landscape at least did not surprise him.

            Kage and Skia dismounted, and Kozzy did the same, though less gracefully, his mind preoccupied with more than the precise control of his limbs. The gravity of the choice he had made threatened to flood his mind like a bottle of ink upended on a page. He looked to the moon for some sort of sign and tried to read the clearing, but saw nothing. The moonlight on the rocks and trees seemed as unreal and impossible as a mirage of water in the desert, and the moon itself looked as blank as a china plate, and a broken one at that, since it was not full.

            “Follow me, Kozzy,” Skia said.

            In moments they were standing in front of a door embedded in the side of a low hill of bare rock. It faced west, and though at this angle the moonlight did not provide much aid in Kozzy’s attempts to see what figures were carved on the stone, he saw that they were the same on both sides of the split in the middle of the door where it would open. This reassured him a little, though with the thought of what he was about to do screaming an alarum in his head and the eerie unreadability of this place, he had no thoughts to spare to determine why this would be so.

            “What is your full name?” Skia asked, calling his attention away from the door.

            “Kozmotis.” Skia waited for him to go on. He shook his head. “When we enter the Academy, we no longer use our family names. If it’s me, now, who’s meant to be tested, Kozmotis is the only name I can give.”

            Skia nodded. “Kozmotis, what have you decided?”

            “I will take the test today.”

            Skia nodded again. “Kozmotis, behind this door lies yet another. I will open the first, and you will open the second. When you open the second, you will be in the domain of Shadow. There, it will choose you or it will not. I do not welcome you now, Kozmotis. I will welcome you after Shadow does.” She paused. “If you are chosen,” she said, her voice losing its tone of ceremony, “you will know. I swear it. If you are not, Kage will wait here to open the outer door again when you call. I think you’ll be able to call so that he can hear you.”

            Half-formed questions pushed up through his mind, but Kozzy could sense dawn approaching and he guessed Skia could too, for she marched the few remaining steps to the outer door, placed her hands on two worn sections of carvings, and began to push the two halves apart.

            When the gap was large enough for a person to pass through, Skia stepped back and gestured for Kozzy to come forward. Looking at the utter blackness within, he found he could not move. He clenched his jaw and let his eyes be pulled up to the sky, the moon and stars, and took his last few steps toward the door without looking at the space beyond the threshold. Despite his terror, he could not back down. Not now. Not when there was nowhere to retreat to.

            He met Skia’s eyes before stepping into the darkness, saw them widen and her lips thin. At that moment, he realized that she had likely never seen someone about to undergo the test so terrified. All the others would have known their choice was right.

            His attempt to take a deep breath felt and sounded more like the beginning of a sob as he closed his eyes and passed into the darkness. He felt the moonlight linger on his back for one brief moment more, and then Skia spoke a word of Erebusian, and the doors closed behind him.

            For the first time in his life, Kozzy was surrounded by total darkness.

            Every instinct of a light adept within him told him to call for light, to summon something to banish the darkness that by turns pressed close upon him and seemed to spiral out into limitless void. Words of Shining clamored in his mind, but none resolved into harmony. He could speak them here, but they would have no power, not from his mouth, not anymore. He could not call on the sun here. He could not call on the moon. He could not even call on the distant stars.

            In the forest he had been wrong. It was possible to be separated from Light, to lose its language.

            In the unreadable emptiness, he fell to his knees, silent as the smooth stone beneath him. He couldn’t open the door. He had failed already. How could he move even an inch further into the blackness before him? How could he even know which way he was facing?

            He had abandoned Light and only now was he realizing he could not live without it, that Shadow was not even a choice. He curled up on the floor, certain he would die in the formless darkness, in the void that swallowed all meaning, all words he could ever trace upon it.

            And then a word came to him, a word not of Shining, a word with no meaning, one meaning, ten thousand meanings. A word he did not know if he still had the right to speak.

            A name.

            He whispered the name, holding its two syllables like talismans between his lips. And the dark did not destroy it.

            He stood, the simple sound strengthening him like a draught of light.

            Arms held in front of him, palms spread, he took one step, then another, into the dark. He does not remember how many steps he took before his hands touched the second door, but he thinks it could not have been more than a dozen.

            Under his fingertips the inner door felt carved just as the outer one had been, but he could not detect any worn patches. However this door opened, it was not by the strength of human hands, though he did try. When all his strength did not produce even the slightest indication that the door was willing to move, he leaned forward and rested his forehead upon the cool stone. Opening a door did not seem like it should be a difficult thing. For a light apprentice, the opening of doors was one of the first ways in which they learned the magic of light could affect the material world. It was the simplest of physical revelations. Even without the power of consumed light within him, Kozzy thought he should be able to use the innate nature of his light-self to open any door. Though Shining had vanished from his mind, he should not need to speak the word for this.

            The thought did not bloom in his mind, for blooming requires light, but it came to him that of course the innate nature of his light-self could not open this door. When this door opened, it opened not to revelation, but to more secrets. To yet further darkness that had never been troubled or balanced by light. To say the test was a secret was true, but it would have been truer for Skia to say that the test was unknowable. Beyond this door lay a darkness as universal and individual as that which rested inside his skull.

            The door would open when he understood that what the darkness needed of him was not strength he lacked. What it demanded was not skill he did not possess. What it required of him was that skull-darkness, his secrets, himself. Shadow would allow him to enter and learn of it only after he gave it that which was already within himself.

            The task seemed impossible, and then he remembered that no human soul would ever hear what he had to say. He need not say anything. Thoughts would be enough here.

            _I was a hungry child and I will never be satisfied._

_I have been hiding from wrongs done rather than righting them._

_I was chosen by Light but was never offered Shadow._

_I am Sandy’s lover._

_I am a dreambrewer._

            With this last thought, the door swung open, and Kozzy fell forward through it to tumble down the narrow, precipitous, twisting passage beyond. Sliding and skidding on the smooth stone beneath his feet, he rushed headlong into the unknown. The farther he went, the less certain he was of whether his fear of stopping or going on forever was uppermost. Turns would knock him from wall to wall, giving him no chance to pause and collect his feet underneath him and adding a host of bruises to his already injured body. When he finally stopped, he didn’t know how far down he was, how far forward he had fallen, or how far yet he had to go. To one side the path sloped up, and to the other side the path sloped down.

            Kozzy pushed himself stiffly to his feet. There would be no point in going back up. He had already decided to go forward when he thought about the door. He spread his arms out so that they touched both sides of the passage and started to shuffle his way downwards. Maybe it would have been more dramatic, more fitting for him to continue falling, but, alone in the dark, his mind felt clearer than it had in days. He didn’t have to act out the expected story here. No one was watching. He had fallen enough to say he fell. _And might it not be important later for me to know that I stood up and walked down?_ he thought.

            The dark didn’t offer him any answers. If it was black ink, it still waited for a pen.

            Kozzy trailed his hands against the cool, damp stone and wondered if he’d know if ( _when_ ) shadow chose him.

 

            He had begun to feel both weary and thirsty when the walls of the passage stopped abruptly and he stepped into a chamber that seemed very large, at least based on the echo of his footfalls. Arms stretched in front of him, he took a few steps out into the space. Was this another test? Did those chosen by shadow know how what they were supposed to do in this cavern? Not wanting to get too far away from the door, Kozzy sat down cross-legged on the floor to rest and think. Shadow had not come to him yet, though he had successfully opened the door. Maybe he could have been a shadow adept as a child, but having learned so much of light, there was no help for him now. Perhaps he should go back up? He didn’t really want to, especially when he had no idea how he would explain what had happened to either the shadow adepts or anyone else.

            He took a deep breath to clear his head, then another. He had thought the door was impossible to open, but he had been wrong. What he must do now was figure out what he was wrong about in regard to this room.

            The only sound in the chamber was the faint sound of his breath, like waves running in and out on a distant shore. His sight was blinded as it had been for the whole ordeal. All he could smell was the slightly acidic scent of damp cave rock, and the air did not even bring that taste to his tongue. The cool, smooth floor supporting him was the only thing available to touch. _I have never been somewhere so empty_ , Kozzy thought.

            More breath.

            More waves.

            They faltered. This was where he was wrong. The room was not empty at all. It was full of shadow.

            As soon as he thought this, a dizziness swept over him and he sank to the floor. Something was saying yes, something was saying hello. Kozzy began to shiver. No, this space where light had never shone was certainly not empty.

            His mind raced wildly back to a conversation he had with Sandy when they were in their third and fifth years. “What do you think it would be like to meet Light, if it were a person?” Kozzy had asked.

            Even in the daylight, Sandy’s eyes had seemed to glow. “I don’t think it would be a person,” he’d said. “And isn’t Solana frightening enough?” Kozzy had laughed, then. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

            Now, in this cave, he would have been willing to stake his life that Shadow was here. Something pressed against him super-tangibly, moving not a hair on his head or a fold of his clothes yet still racing over every inch of his skin, licking at his wounds like cold fire. Part of him wanted to cry out then—to say “No! That’s Sandy’s!” but a larger part of him knew that his body was indeed his own, and if it was not, it was Shadow that had the right to it.

            Not-words fell into his mind as if from a great height. There was no meaning, like all in light, but Kozzy could feel surprise, feel the skating of magic like that which he had never felt before running along all his nerves and veins. Something was surprised that there was still so much light in him.

            There was a brief pause, and Kozzy had just a moment to feel relieved and proud of his remaining connection to the light before he was gripped by the most profound terror of his life. If he had come here to be chosen by shadow, and shadow was choosing him now, the light would have to come out. There was no time to articulate the fear in his mind then, but much later, Pitch would define the lightning flash of horror at that instant as the realization that, in seconds time, an aspect of himself that he had thought intrinsic to his very being was going to be removed from him, by force, by its opposite.

            For that, even years of preparation might not be enough.

            A sensation, wholly indescribable and more intense by far than any pleasure or pain he had yet experienced began to creep up his limbs, too quickly and yet far too slow, the feeling seemingly building to a lethal pitch. Later, when he could not remember if he had screamed or not, he thinks he must have.

            With no time to prepare, and little action possible, Kozzy only managed to make one choice as shadow claimed him. As the sun, the moon, and even the stars seemed to fade in his memories, he held on to one light in the only way he could—unable to symbolically grasp with his now powerless hands or feet, he closed his eyes tight, keeping the light there, however small and secret.

            And Shadow would not or could not touch it.

            When he opened his eyes again, he could see the chamber fully. He had stopped just at the edge of a perfectly still pool, bisected by a bridge of stones. On the other side was a doorway, set just high enough off the ground that it would have been impossible to find without sight. Kozzy—not feeling very much like Kozzy—cupped water from the pool in shaking hands and drank. It reminded him of the water from the Great Moon Fountain, though the thought struck him as perverse.

            On legs that did not seem to move like his own, he stepped from stone to stone until he reached the other side.

 

            Thus, a light apprentice’s first encounter with total darkness.

 

***

 

            In the passage under the library, the glow from Sandy’s forehead remains steady even when it becomes the sole illumination in the darkness. Sandy smiles at the apprehension on Pitch’s face, and Pitch realizes he’s never actually told Sandy anything about how he was chosen for Shadow. It seems important now that he find some time to do so in the near future, but at this moment, Sandy seems as content underground as he would be in an open field at high noon, so it’d probably be best to simply continue their investigation.

            “Are you ready?” asks Sandy.

            Pitch nods and Sandy leads the way further down the stairs. At the bottom, the passage turns sharply to the left, just like the one at the Broadhand well house had, but instead of leading to a moonpool, it ends in a wall made up of stones similar to the ones that formed the staircase and its walls where that door had been, and another passage, lined with crumbling brick, that extends beyond sight on their right-hand side.

            “It looks like it’ll be a while before we reach a dead end,” Sandy says.

            “Or at least a different one than this.” Pitch gestures at the wall that would have held the entrance to the moonpool chamber if they had been at Broadhand corner. “Something about this seems strange. I can’t put my finger on it, what with this whole place being so laden with secrets…can you tell anything?”

            Sandy turns from the longer passage to the wall. The stones glisten damply in the light from his forehead, shimmering as he looks them up and down. After several long moments, he nods, throwing the scene into a confusion of light and darkness. “There was a door here,” he says, walking closer to the wall. “But it’s been built over, and not simply bricked in. Whoever did it tried to make it look like the wall had only ever been this way. But they couldn’t, because, see, here, there are old stones next to newer ones. It’s hard to tell on first glance because they’re partially interwoven, I guess, with the others. The arch is gone.”

            “I don’t know a great deal about masonry,” Pitch says, “but wouldn’t that have been extraordinarily difficult?”

            “Yes…” Sandy trails off as he moves yet closer to the wall, “Especially when the way down here was already hidden…why not just brick it over? Why was it important for this place to be not only inaccessible, but also unnoticeable? There’s something else here, too…” He presses his hand flat against the damp stone, breathes deeply, frowns, and places his other hand on the wall as well.

            “What is it?” Pitch asks.

            “There’s magic on the other side of this wall.” Sandy shifts his hands and breathes deeply again. “But I can’t tell what kind. Not light or shadow, I’d be able to recognize those. It’s something…something that’s still _active_ , which means it must be very powerful, if the working was done before the newer stones were placed. Put your hands on the place where the doorway was. See if you can feel it too.”

            Pitch obeys, closing his eyes in concentration for several breaths. This isn’t something that comes naturally to him, like it does for Sandy. If he recognizes the magic that Sandy senses, it’ll only be because of the time he’s spent among various adepts on his travels. What he senses here at first seems confused. Sandy just said it wasn’t light or shadow, and it isn’t, but he still feels as though they both have something to do with this place. Another breath. Focus.

            “If I had to guess,” Pitch says, “I’d say that there’s a water magic working behind this wall.”

            Sandy presses his hands yet more firmly against the stone. “Incredible.”

            “Almost literally,” Pitch mutters. “Sandy, remember what I told you about water adepts? They leave Oceana’s islands very, very rarely, and then usually only to visit the disputed archipelagoes that lie between their waters and the Empire. Personally, I’ve never seen a water adept outside Oceana, and the City of the Moon is about as far away from their islands as you can get. For a major water working to be here, of all places…it doesn’t make sense.”

            “You may have not ever seen a water adept outside of Oceana,” Sandy says, “but I have. Some months after your banishment, a party of Meray visited the palace and stayed for some time. I don’t remember exactly what they were here for, but there were several water adepts in their group. If they were involved with this…whatever it is…it must have taken an astonishing amount of strength. To still be active, nearly five centuries on…”

            “And it doesn’t feel like healing, which is what I became used to associating with water craft,” Pitch says.

            “Water,” Sandy says absently, and with the smallest of gestures extinguishes the light from the mark on his forehead. “Shade,” he curses, and Pitch can hear a slight shakiness in his voice. “It’s a little different when you’re underground. Pitch, does anything about the condensation on this wall seem strange to you?”

            Pitch shakes his head, remembers that Sandy can’t see him, and replies in the negative.

            “It does to me,” Sandy says. “And do you know why?”

            “Why?”

            “I can still see it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kozzy falls down a lot, doesn't he? 
> 
> And oh yeah--T-T-T-TITLE DROP! Admittedly I never expected that to happen in this story at all but I'm glad there was a place for it.


	12. Murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *The murder is not of a person.* Pitch and Sandy follow the track of secrets underneath the city. Water is found. Sandy meets Bunny in an unusual location. There's an invitation and a significant theft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

            “What!?” Pitch’s alarm rings through the small chamber, but Sandy waves at him to be quiet.

            “It’s the only thing I can see right now,” he says, and swipes his hand through the condensation. “And now, my fingertips.” With no further hesitation, he places his fingers in his mouth and Pitch sees his eyes widen briefly before he again lets the mark on his forehead blaze, blinding Pitch for a moment. “Pitch! This is—you try it, I’m sure of it though—this is moonpool water!”

            Pitch gathers a few drops from the wall on his own fingertips and tastes them.

            Sandy eagerly watches his face shift through several expressions, settling on none. “Isn’t it?”

            “But—Sandy, that was so long ago. I’m not sure if I’m remembering it correctly. Maybe if you hadn’t said what you thought it was…”

            “Pitch. I remember the moonpool. And I think you do too. We may have forgotten tens of thousands of other days and nights, but that one was more memorable than most.”

            “All right. It _does_ taste like moonpool water. But why here, on a stone wall underneath the library, of all places?”

            “I don’t know,” Sandy says. “Yet.” He turns to the brick passage, the light from his forehead making the cracks and irregularities in the walls show up starkly, outlined in deep black shadows. “I think we should keep exploring down here first.”

            “To see the patterns.” Pitch nods and goes over to the brick-lined tunnel. It’s wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, but Sandy and he may have to walk single-file, for the arched ceiling is low enough that Pitch can only stand without worrying about hitting his head in the very center of the passage.

            “Hmm? Well, yes. I’m always reading for those. But we came down here first to find books, and books I still aim to find. Patterns are well and good, but…there’s something I don’t like about having to rely on my skills as a light adept to figure out why there are all these gaps in the history of the Lunar Kingdom. If we’re having trouble, then there’s no way someone without magic of any sort would be able to successfully start an investigation. And we only know what’s missing because we weren’t relying on catalogues; we were relying on our own immortal memories. Even if the books don’t tell us what we need to know about ourselves, they still need to be found. The Lunar kingdom is neither bad nor good enough to freely alter the records of its past.” Sandy goes to join Pitch where the bricks begin. “Well. I guess we’d better start. I’ll go first.”

 

            Though from the base of the stair the tunnel had looked like a continuous straight path into the darkness, as Pitch and Sandy go further in, it proves to follow a slight curve instead. For several minutes, this is the most interesting thing about the brick-lined passage. In any other way, it offers little in the area of fascination. The bricks remain the dull red that myriads of other bricks share, they remain joined by light gray mortar, they remain, in texture, rough and pitted as any ordinary wall of aged bricks. As ordinary bricks, they have crumbled here and there, and frequently pieces have fallen to the floor, including in many cases, whole bricks.

            “How old do you think this tunnel is?” Sandy asks Pitch. “Can you guess, based on your time spent in the Empire?”

            “It’s hard to say,” Pitch replies, and for a few steps only the sound of the brick dust grinding beneath their shoes makes any sound. “The places in the ash-halves of the Empire cities that I visited were more frequently used, and had more obvious purposes. This tunnel doesn’t look like it’s ever been maintained, though it also looks like it was built well to begin with. It’s at least a few centuries old.”

            “The shape of the arch reminds me of Dimming-era architecture,” Sandy says, sliding his light along the ceiling. “Could it be that old?”

            “Maybe. But you lived in the city then. Surely you’d have noticed a lot of tunnels being built under the city.”

            “But why would I have noticed that? There’s always been some sort of construction going on in the city. As far as I would have known, they might just have been building additional sewers or storm drains or something.”

            “Yes, that is true…” Pitch looks around. “It certainly isn’t one of those, though.”

            Sandy nods. “Even with the slight damp, the brick pieces are the only rubbish here.” He looks toward a brick at the side of the passage and then above it to see where it had fallen from. “But maybe there should be. Pitch, look.” He points from the brick to the space where it had been. “If that brick had just fallen, it’d be a lot closer to the center of the tunnel. Someone must have moved it from the center of the path to the edge. Maybe it happened last week, maybe it happened fifty years ago. But it would have happened long after the construction, and that means people have been using this place. Yet it’s still so clean, except for what could be considered natural decay. So little human evidence. If I had to guess right now, I’d say that this tunnel is used, so the bricks have to be pushed out of the way, but for whoever it’s used by it’s very important that it appear unused.”

            “A deception yet more active than the erasure of the doorway,” Pitch says.

            “And again, the question is _why_ ,” Sandy comments. “No one is going to stumble across this tunnel by accident. Everyone—except us, that is—who finds their way down here is going to know what they’re here for. Well, when we come to the end of it, surely—” He stops talking as the first fork in the passage appears before them.

            “Surely…?” Pitch repeats, and Sandy shoots him an annoyed look.

            “All right, so it’s not just a tunnel. It’s a network. That just means there are multiple endpoints. And with your help, we will at least find _something_.”

            “I can’t reveal the right way to go,” says Pitch.

            “Well, neither can I, not without unintended consequences,” says Sandy. “But you can sense which way holds more secrets, can’t you?”

            They stop where the path splits. Both branches look identical when Sandy shines his light down them.

            “Let me see what I can do,” Pitch says, stepping forward. He spreads his arms so that each of his open palms is flat to one of the forks, and stands very still for a few moments. “That way.” He points down the tunnel to their right.

            “Off we go then.” Sandy smiles at him, some curiosity in his expression. He’s confident that Pitch didn’t choose one of the paths at random, but he couldn’t detect any magic at all for those silent moments. Maybe he had spoken too soon when he implied that he could tell when shadow-work was being done. After all, moving a boat wasn’t deep shadow—and it looked like this was.

 

            It’s difficult to tell time in the tunnels, but over the course of an hour or maybe two, they encounter several more forks through which Pitch has to guide them, and three other points where the brick tunnels intersect with staircases of much older stone and the brick wall is interrupted by a section of stone that used to hold a door. In all of these cases, the wall has been altered in an attempt to make it look like the door had never been there at all.

            At each, Sandy insists on pausing, tasting the condensation, and placing his hands on the stone to try to see what’s behind it. It’s always the same as at the wall before the library.

            “Moonpool water,” one will say.

            “A water working,” the other will say.

            They treat each interruption in the brick as they do forks in the tunnels, but as of now the secrets pull them forward rather than up.

            They don’t talk much as they go on. The tunnels seem to discourage it, and in any case, it might not be good for their purpose to make their presence known as they chase secrets. Any conversation is brief, soft in the surrounding silence.

 

            “Do you have any idea where we are?” Pitch asks.

            “We started out heading north,” says Sandy. “I think we’ve mostly kept going that way. We’ve been going downhill, anyway.”

            “Toward the river?”

            “Possibly. Or toward the palace.”

            “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

            “Nor me,” Sandy says.

 

            “You must have noticed the gutters along the edges of the tunnel,” Sandy says.

            “And the way the floor is raised slightly in the middle, yes,” Pitch replies. “Flood drainage? I know how to get back to the last staircase if…”

            “No, don’t worry about that. It didn’t look like rain today. And these aren’t sewers. But with the water working…you told me before about the lifeblood rivers of the water adepts. What if they needed that water while working? And the gutters helped carry it through the tunnels?”

            They walk a few more steps before Pitch answers. “That would make whatever water-working we’re feeling the most…supported by infrastructure…that I’ve ever encountered.”

 

            Sandy is about to ask Pitch if maybe they shouldn’t turn around and go back to the last staircase and return to the surface that way, start again later, when the next curve in the tunnel reveals a new set of stairs. Pitch only holds his hands up for an instant before gesturing upward. “Here,” he says. “We’re going to find _something_ here.”

            On the whole, this staircase and stone wall looks just like the others they’ve encountered so far. The only thing Sandy could point to as a possible difference would be the way the steps here seem to be slightly more worn than the others.

            “What’ll we do if there’s someone on the other side?” Pitch asks, as they both pause at the foot of the stairs.

            Sandy lets out a short sigh. “I guess tell them the truth and see what happens next? I’m getting tired of the idea of subterfuge.”

            “Indeed. Well, I’m going to conceal myself to all but you before we resurface—that is, if we can.”

            Sandy shrugs. “Might as well find out now,” he says, and immediately begins climbing the stairs.

            “You know, sometimes you don’t _act_ like someone who spent over three hundred years peacefully isolated on an island,” Pitch mutters, following him.

            “Really, Pitch, I only act like myself,” Sandy replies. “Anyway, I wasn’t on the island due to indecision or an unwillingness to act. I just didn’t know what kinds of decisions or actions I needed to make beyond the ones I already had. Ah, there’s a trapdoor up here with the same kind of mechanism on this side as the one in the library.” He pushes on it, and just as he’s beginning to think that he’ll need to add a bit of Shining to the procedure, the block begins to slide upward.           “I don’t hear anyone reacting to that,” he tells Pitch, and, once the block swings out of the way, “and wherever this is, it’s totally dark.  Except for me, I mean.” He gasps. “It’s _something_ all right.”

            “Now you’re just being a tease,” Pitch says. “I’d push you up and out if I could.”

            Sandy scoffs as he climbs up into the room. “I could have been crueler,” he says. “I could have told you what I saw right away. Now watch out.”

            “For _what_?” Pitch asks, though he immediately begins to shade his eyes.

            Sandy speaks a few words of Shining and a small globe of clear golden light appears above his palm.

            When Pitch finally opens his eyes once he’s fully exited the trapdoor, he stares around the room in bewildered surprise. “I thought we were looking for books! Not…someone’s wine cellar?”

            “I’m pretty sure it’s not wine,” Sandy says. “Calm down and look closely.”

            Pitch obeys, and in a moment his eyes widen. “They’re labeled with water-script.”

            “And the sign is the one that means ‘Lifeblood River’, or at least it looks like the one you had me copy in my notebook. I think they’re probably accurate labels. You can feel it in the air…” Sandy trails off, slowly passing his hand through the air of the room. “It’s dense with magic.” He looks up at Pitch. “We should take some and test it.”

            Pitch starts to nod, then stops abruptly. “What? Sandy, we don’t even know whose this is, we don’t even know how we’re going to get out of here, if it is magic, it’s not what we’re familiar with…”

            Sandy waves his hand at Pitch dismissively. “I could not care less whose this is. There’s a door on the other side of the room behind the racks, and most of these bottles look like they’ve been abandoned for decades at least. Also, if it isn’t from the Lifeblood River, it won’t matter if we take one or two bottles. If it is, only Jack Frost might need it, and there’s hundreds of bottles here.” He smiles. “Pitch. This isn’t going to get you in any more trouble, and it isn’t going to get me into any trouble I can’t get out of. All right?”

            “And why aren’t we going back the way we came?” Pitch inquires.

            “Well, we _are_ still looking for books, right? There weren’t any down in the tunnels. And does this water seem like enough of a secret to account for what you felt?”

            Pitch sighs in frustration. “Maybe? If we knew what it meant. All right, we’ll leave by the other door. But Sandy, please, let me make you difficult to notice before we do.”

 

            “It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Pitch asks as Sandy fusses at the lock of the cellar door.

            “No, but I feel like I’ve drunk an entire pot of coffee and my entire body has that pins and needles feeling. _Open, damn you_.”

            “I hadn’t thought it was possible to hiss in Shining,” Pitch comments. Sandy rolls his eyes at him while pushing the door open with one hand.

            The door opens onto a short hallway ending in more stairs. No one else is visible, and Sandy shrugs a little before leaving the cellar, a bottle of the mysterious water in one hand. Pitch follows, holding his own bottle, and in a moment they’re heading up the stairs, which are made of fine white marble, the same as that which tiled the floor of the short hallway. Sandy’s sure he’s seen the pattern of the tiles before, all sweeping arches interspersed with a few palm-sized circular tiles, but he can’t remember in what context. He assumes that whatever they find at the top of the stairs will jog his memory.

            They emerge into a covered walkway, also paved with marble. The outer wall is solid, save for a few doors, while the inner wall is not a wall at all, but rather a series of slender stone columns between pointed arches. Tufts and blades of grass have invaded the tiles, scouting forces from the brilliantly green, yet overgrown lawn that covers the central courtyard. A small, covered well of golden limestone stands in the center of the lawn, next to a waist-high pillar of the same material.

            Upon seeing these, Sandy gasps, and before Pitch can say anything to stop him, rushes out into the knee-high grass. As soon as he passes into the sunlight, the weak hold the shadow-concealment had on him breaks, and Pitch just shakes his head, looking around at the shaded walkway and the courtyard to see if there’s anyone there that ought to be noticed. Thankfully, it’s all currently empty.

            “Pitch! I know where this is!” Sandy calls back to him. “This is the Dream Cloisters. It’s part of the palace complex. I haven’t been here since I stopped working as the king’s personal dreamweaver…”

            “It doesn’t look like much of anyone has,” Pitch remarks, joining Sandy on the lawn, standing comfortably in the shade that covers most of the courtyard as the afternoon wears on.

            “Well, there wouldn’t be any reason to.” Sandy starts to walk over to the well. “The whole purpose for this place seemed stranger and stranger to me the older I got. Back then, the king would hold these parties…they started off like any other ball, but they ended sooner. Then a dozen, two dozen chosen guests would stay, and come out here. There were individual beds for everyone on the lawn, and everyone would take something to make them sleep. Then I would brew a dream for them.” He lets his hand rest in the concavity on top of the small pillar. “This used to hold a dreamglass.”

            “Light-dreams just for…entertainment?” Pitch asks.

            Sandy doesn’t look at him as he answers. “Well, the king usually had other purposes. But, yes, mostly everyone thought of it as a particularly exclusive sort of entertainment. It was something all the light adepts in the city knew about, but we didn’t talk about it much. I mean…the king ordered it. It didn’t do any harm. You see why it would have begun to seem strange to me, though, don’t you?”

            “If a shadow adept is allowed to have an opinion, I don’t think it seems like a practice that ought to be reinstated with the restoration of the light adepts.”

            “Stars, I wonder if it was something even the Synod knew about,” Sandy muses.

            Pitch discards his reply on that subject in favor of harshly whispering, “Sandy! There’s someone coming!”

            Sandy turns in the direction Pitch is pointing and sees a man walking into the courtyard from one of the other doors. He hasn’t noticed them yet, as he’s more involved in maneuvering a cart holding a few wooden barrels off the marble tile and onto the lawn.

            “Should we hide?” Pitch whispers.

            “Maybe you should,” Sandy replies. “I want to know who he is and why he’s here. He doesn’t look like a courtier or anyone who might be involved in knowing whether I should be in the palace or not. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

            “All will be well someday,” Pitch mutters, and in moments he’s faded into the shade so that someone who didn’t know he was there would never see him.

            Meanwhile, the man has successfully pulled the cart onto the lawn, and now that Sandy’s looking for it, he can see where the tall grass mostly conceals two parallel lines of bare earth where the cart must often run.

            As for the man himself, he’s wearing what, given that they are within the palace complex, must be a simple servant’s uniform, in a few shades of green. He wears a belt holding various tools, and Sandy guesses from these that he’s a gardener. A wide-brimmed grayish hat covers his head, but it appears that it doesn’t do this consistently, for his face is as deeply tanned as his hands and arms.

            When he’s about twenty steps from Sandy, he finally looks up. He stops, his eyes widening, and then continues forward until he’s close enough to speak to him without raising his voice. “Hello, Master Sandren,” he says. “Or…Sandy? You gave some of my friends light to drink, recently. I didn’t expect to find you here, since I’ve never seen anyone here before. Then again, if I was going to find someone here, you would have been my first guess.”

            “I do prefer Sandy,” Sandy says. “At least, from most.” He takes a few steps closer to the man. “If you’ll excuse me, though, I’d like to level our interaction. You know both your own name and what you just said means, and I know I don’t know the first and I think I don’t know the second.”

            “My name’s Aster,” he says, “but the reason I recognized you was because Sera described you to me, and she calls me Bunny. Either one’ll be fine.

            “Anyway, the reason I’m not too surprised to find you here is that this place has always felt a little more magical to me than anywhere else I’ve gone in the Lunar Kingdom, and you’re Lunar Kingdom magic, aren’t you?”

            Sandy nods slowly. “So you can tell that what’s missing is magic?”

            “It’d be a sorry thing if I couldn’t,” Bunny says, and looks Sandy in the eyes. His are the vivid, clear green that signals an earth adept.

            “Why stay here?” Sandy exclaims, unable to stop himself.

            Bunny lifts one of the barrels from the cart and brings it over to the well. “Staying put is something that earth adepts tend to do,” he says, smirking. “But who says I’m not trying to leave? Saving up to travel to Verd, and then for adept training afterward, isn’t a quick process for a gardener.” He opens the barrel, attaches it to a rope hanging over the well, and starts lowering it. “I’m just lucky my powers didn’t manifest as traumatically as Frost’s did.”

            “Sorry,” Sandy says. “I forgot how things worked in Verd.”

            Bunny shrugs and tests the weight of the barrel by pulling on the rope. Finding it full, he begins to pull it up. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’s not that interesting unless you’re fighting with it.

            “Now, what I want to know is how you got here. I only ever found this place because I looked through a locked grate and saw a well a lot closer than the one I had been getting my water from—and broke in. As far as I knew, that was the only way in or out of this place. I don’t think anyone’s supposed to be here at all. Which is interesting, what with the grass in this courtyard growing lusher than any I’ve ever seen in the kingdom, much less the city. The water, too,” he says, closing the full barrel and returning it to his cart, “makes the plants grow better even outside of this courtyard.”

            Sandy can see no reason not to tell him the truth, or at least, the truth minus Pitch. “Tunnels. I was in the Tooth Palace, investigating something, and I found an entrance to a series of tunnels. One of the exits comes up into this place. It used to be called the Dream Cloisters, by the way.”

            “Well, they certainly don’t call it anything now,” Bunny says. “But—tunnels. That’s puzzling. I thought I had mapped out all of the ones under the palace.”

            “You know about them?”

            “The ones I know about are meant to be shortcuts around the palace complex. They go out into the city with exits at a lot of markets and public buildings. Mostly they’re used by servants to move stuff from one place to another as quickly as possible. Fresh flowers on hot days, things like that.”

            “What do they look like?”

            “Oh, like the servant-side of a lot of places. Functional, but ugly. Water from the river’s always dripping in so they’re all slowly falling apart and being rebuilt, so the walls are all patchwork. Some of the junctions have signs, some don’t. Mostly the tunnels go in straight lines and whoever built them tried to keep them level, but in some places there’ll be curves for reasons no one can figure out, or you’ll have to climb up and down a flight of steps like they had been built around something in the way—but they’re older than the gas and water lines, so who knows what could be there.”

            “The ones from the library to the palace weren’t the same as those,” Sandy says.

            “Do they look like they could be useful, though?”

            Sandy shakes his head. “I think they’re already in use, though I’m not sure of much more than that.”

            Bunny nods, and continues filling the barrels with water.

            “May I taste some?” Sandy asks, interrupting him before he can put the lid on.

            Bunny nods, and Sandy cups the water in his hands and brings it to his lips to drink. He closes his eyes to better focus on deciphering the taste. It’s not moonpool water, but it tastes more like moonpool water than anything he’s had from a well for centuries. “Strange,” he says.

            “That’s all?” asks Bunny.

            “Sorry,” Sandy says, laughing at himself a little. “It would take a long time to explain.”

            “Hmm.” Bunny loads the last of the barrels onto his cart. “I suppose it’s as good a way as any to sum up this place. You see the building around us—looks totally abandoned, right? I’ve looked, though, and the rooms are full of stuff. I could never figure out any rhyme or reason to it.”

            Sandy inhales sharply. “Bunny! Do any of these rooms have books or papers in them?”

            Bunny nods. “That’s one of the most common things, actually.”

 

            After a brief conversation which makes Sandy sure that “eccentric” is going to become one of his most often-stated traits among the people of the city, he persuades Bunny to show him where the books are.

            Irony’s not the right word for it, but as Bunny takes him through a few of the rooms that line the courtyard, Sandy realizes that this is the first time he’s ever been inside the building that surrounds the Dream Cloisters. All those years ago they had either been used for storing the beds and linens or for hosting a certain number of guards and servants. The original purpose of the rooms still seems clear to Sandy as he follows Bunny inside. The rooms are either small, with windows that allow a person to easily see both into the courtyard and to the rest of the palace complex outside, or long and narrow, with few windows.

            “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Bunny says, pushing open a door to one of those long, narrow rooms, “but this is the one I’ve found with the most books in it, not just papers.”

            Sandy’s jaw drops as he steps inside, and he hopes Pitch is following him. Even in the dim light he immediately recognizes the jeweled spines of the missing chronicles, and with than recognition, the other books piled around start to look familiar as well. “And they’ve just been…here? In this abandoned building? For so long?” Sandy forces the last question around the lump forming in his throat. He’s not sure what he expected to find, but the sight of the Light Academy’s books, stacked in unorganized piles, the lowest books touching the dusty floor, brings him closer to tears than he’s yet been during this quest of his and Pitch’s.

            When Sandy undertook the project of moving the Light Academy’s library to the Great Library, he’d done so because there had been no one else who could. The remaining adepts were all too old, then. In the last stage of the Dimming, he had overseen the transport of thousands of volumes of lore, history, music, poetry, and those that combined all of these to form the great books on Light, that treated of dreams and revelation and truth. He had done this, and done it alone, because it was his conviction that such knowledge, such art, should not be lost.

            Now, in front of him, he sees it lost. Most of these books had not been noted as missing. And even if they had been, so many of them are in Shining. He is one of only two who have access to their contents now, and what good was a book with such readers, willingly and unwillingly withdrawn from society? The continuity of the knowledge of the adepts had been broken.

            The stacks of books stretch all through the length of the room, the curvature of the building concealing some of them. There are so, so many. They look dead to Sandy, as books have never done before. Everything within them had been useful or joy-giving to someone, once, but they can’t all be that to Sandy. He is the only one left to hold all these books in his mind, and he can’t. Even if he knew how to start sharing these books with others, there was no one out there who needed to have these books shared with them. He thinks of what North said, about some things not being light business, and feels as though it’s taking all his strength just to stand in this room with all these dead books.

            “I don’t know about ‘so long’,” Bunny says. “When I saw this room from the outside I was curious about it because there wasn’t a single missing pane in the windows or crack in the glazing. None of the other rooms are like that. They’re drafty and damp. This one’s sealed. And when I found this door…well, it was locked.”

            Bunny’s words lift Sandy’s spirits somewhat. At least the books weren’t put here to rot. But they were still dead, weren’t they? The weight of lost knowledge presses on Sandy once more before a rising bubble of anger arrests the progress of the heaviness on his heart. These books that had been taken out of the library, and then preserved in secret, had not died natural deaths. These books, and the knowledge they contained, had been _murdered_.

            But wait—“Was it unlocked later?”

            Bunny looks embarrassed. “I broke in, actually. Hard to explain—I asked a vine to break the lock, and it obliged. I had looked through the windows and seen the books, and I was hoping that maybe some of them would be interesting enough to read when I had free time.”

            “And you must have a great deal of that,” Sandy says musingly.

            “Yeah, well. Natural talents,” says Bunny. “I already do more and better work than any of the other gardeners, doing more won’t get me noticed in a good way. Didn’t do me any good, though, breaking in. They’re in some language I can’t read. Now, did you just want to see these books, or…”

            “Take the oldest ones,” Pitch whispers in Sandy’s ear. “Take as many as you can.”

            “Bunny,” Sandy says, “That cart you have—can we use it to transport books via tunnel? To somewhere outside the palace walls?”

            Bunny thinks for a minute. “I suppose so.” He looks over at Sandy, who’s moving deeper into the room, running his hands over the spines and muttering to himself. Dim flashes of light emanate from his hands now and then, sometimes prompting a gasp, or for him to look over his shoulder as if at someone following him. “Can you read these books?”

            “Yes!” Sandy calls back from deep within the room.

            “All right, that’s something,” Bunny says to himself. “But what’s all this about, anyway? You’re not just— _stealing_ them, are you?”

            “Oh, believe me,” Sandy says, reverently holding a large, thick book bound in crumbling age-darkened leather, “I will fully acknowledge that I have taken these books, to anyone who asks about them. But I need to read them first.”

            “Well, I’ll start moving the barrels, then.” Bunny leaves the room and emerges back into the late-afternoon sunlight. “Not like I’ve ever seen anyone around who looked like they really cared what happened in this place.”

 

            “We’re well outside the palace now,” says Bunny, stopping to rest before a wide ramp. “This is the last place to exit that’s wide enough for the cart before we hit some stairs.”

            Sandy acknowledges Bunny with a nod and rests his hands on the cart handle. There must be at least three hundred books on the cart right now, and he’s dying to start reading them, since, as he noticed when he started selecting them, some aren’t from the Academy’s library at all—including the oldest. Still, it hasn’t been easy going, despite the unseen help Sandy is sure Pitch has been providing. Being so aged, the books aren’t standardized in size, and the largest together hang off the edges of the cart, making Sandy nervous when, to avoid potholes in the tunnel floors, Bunny steered the cart closer to the damp walls. Still, it was better than pushing the cart over the potholes. The jolting of that had led to several of the smaller books falling off their stacks, and Pitch had even needed to quite obviously catch one. Sandy hopes that Bunny hadn’t noticed the sudden failure of gravity in the confusion and dim light.

            Bunny does a quick stretch before returning his hands to the cart handle once more. “The ramp’s steeper than it looks,” he says. “I think I can handle the weight by myself. You’d better walk alongside to make sure nothing falls off.”

            Pitch flickers into Sandy’s view for just a moment on the other side of the cart, and Sandy smiles at him gratefully. It’ll take more than two hands to safely secure the books.

            “And, please, try to keep the cart as close to the center of the ramp as you can,” Sandy says. Pitch needs room to walk, too.

 

            They reach street level without incident, emerging into an empty permanent stall at the Old Green Market.

            “Thank you so much for your help, Bunny. I hope that you’ll see how great of a service you’ve done very soon.”

            “Well, I’m not done yet, am I?” Bunny asks, pushing the cart out into the wide isles between the many stalls and booths laden with fine early-autumn produce. A few of the people walking through the market glance at him and the cart of books curiously—all of the usual places where books are sold are much closer to the Great Library—and a few more do double-takes when they realize that the Dreamweaver is walking alongside the cart. None do more than that, though, and Sandy makes a mental note to thank Pitch once they’re able to freely talk again. It must be taking a lot out of him to make them seem worth only a few looks, especially since Sandy has, over the past few days, gone to several markets specifically to give light to the people there.

            “What do you mean?” Sandy asks, and Bunny laughs.

            “How did you think you were going to get all these books to where you’re going?”

            “Oh.” Sandy makes a face at himself. He really hadn’t thought that far ahead. “A cab?”

            “And, what? I’d go back to work? Leaving you to unload all of these from that hypothetical cab alone?”

            “I could manage,” Sandy says. “Anyway, don’t you have work of your own to do? I don’t want you to get in trouble for helping me—I mean, I think I could clear up the situation, but it might be kind of complicated…”

            Bunny shrugs. “I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll get in trouble. My work’ll get done well before anyone checks it. I’m not exactly the palace’s highest priority.” He stops the cart in front of a stall fronted by tables covered with smooth, green ears of sweet corn. “Wait here for a moment, please.” After a few moments spent conversing with the woman at the stall, he returns with a large sheet of canvas.

            “Are you going to cover the books with that?” Sandy asks. “That will be great. If we’re going to be walking all the way to Fountain Square, we’ll need something to protect them from all the dust and dirt of the city.”

            Bunny shakes his head as they tie the canvas around the books. “Truth be told, Sandy,” Bunny says softly, “I was thinking more about protecting ourselves. Think of how we obtained the books. I believe you when you say you have a right to them, but _somebody_ doesn’t.”

            “Oh. Right.” Sandy’s almost sure he can hear Pitch’s laugh amidst the hubbub of the market. Well, it wasn’t as if he could be expected to always be thinking about situations that required secrecy.

 

            It’s a fairly long walk back to Fountain Square, but no one remarks on what they’re doing or asks what’s under the canvas, so Sandy can only assume that Pitch is with them, working shadow magic to hide what’s unusual about the situation. He tries to sense it, but the untrained earth power in Bunny overpowers any subtle touch of shadow that’s meant to be undetectable anyway. Sandy realizes that he’ll just have to trust to Pitch being there, and begins to appreciate having someone like Bunny just _around_. His magic is strong and completely unhidden, and there’s no tension around him like there had been around Jack Frost when Sandy met him. Though not formally trained, there was nothing mysterious to Bunny about his power. It’s a refreshing change from both the overall lack of magic in the City of the Moon and the frustrating combination of great power and lack of essential knowledge that appears in him, Pitch, and Jack.

            As they walk, he tries to draw Bunny out on the topic of his power, and Bunny proves himself willing to be drawn out. “I never lived in Verd, of course,” he explains, “but my mum had a little cutting of soul-vine with her when she came here. I actually still have it, growing in the same big clay pot. It grows fast, but I keep it pruned to a manageable size. Soul-vines are completely edible, you know. They taste like every living green thing at the start of Spring.” He laughs. “Maybe that doesn’t sound appealing. But they’re what earth adepts get their magic from. I remember my mum giving me the berries all the time as a kid, just so there’d be a chance of me becoming an earth adept. Not that there was ever a really good chance of us having enough money to have me trained officially. She used to say, after I started showing some talent, that we’d save up so I could compete in the Ushering Games and get my training paid for that way. Maybe that would have worked out if those new laws hadn’t been passed. Anyway, I’ve figured out enough to make me the best at what I do here.”

            “When I was at the Luminous Academy,” Sandy says, “every child who was found to be chosen by Light was freely given the education to become an adept. It was considered a rejection of Light itself to not teach those chosen.”

            Bunny laughs once, sounding a little bitter. “Wish it was that way in Verd. But there’s just so many people with earth-power—at least that’s what my mum told me. She said it seemed like every other person had at least a touch of power. If everyone became adepts, I don’t know how we’d get anything done.”

            “The reason I mentioned it,” says Sandy, “is that’s still the way I think. Now, I assume you know of Jack Frost.”

            “Too right. It took all my skill to fix the palace gardens after that blizzard in the middle of Summer. I’ve never met him, though. We don’t exactly run in the same circles.”

            “Well, now you do,” Sandy says. “Me. That is, one person isn’t a social circle—that’s not important. The important thing is that both you and Jack have magic, and you’re both untrained, and it’s unlikely for either of you to obtain proper training. That doesn’t seem right to me, and even though I’m not the same kind of adept as either of you, and though you’re not the same kind of adepts as each other, I think it might be helpful to both of you, and me as well, if we were able to meet and at least talk with each other about magic.”

            “You think you could train us?” Bunny asks. It’s clear from his expression that he thinks this is a real possibility, and Sandy knows he must be careful with his answer.

            “The knowledge I have of magic was taught to me as specific to Light,” he begins. “But I think now that there might be some important points where the knowledge I have might be applied more generally. I’ve learned a little about the several kinds of adepts over my lifetime, and someone I know...that is, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained for almost anyone in the separation of adepts and those who could be adepts from each other.”

            “I suppose that’s true,” Bunny says. They push the cart of books across a side street. “All right. I’ll at least come over to talk. To be really honest though, I’m half agreeing because, well, you’re calming to be around. Is that a light adept thing? Sometimes I get nervous around other Selenians…”

            “That’s understandable,” Sandy says. From what he had seen of the behavior towards Jack, who was supposedly under the king’s direct protection, he could only imagine how others might treat a common person who had magic. Only belatedly does he realize that with the laws that passed, Bunny had good reason to be wary of Selenians even if he had been a descendant of Verdans without magic.

 

            Books unloaded into the entryway of Fountain Square and Bunny gone, Pitch reappears from a ripple of shadow. “So, when were you going to tell me that you were singlehandedly going to reinstate the Luminous Academy?”

            “That’s the ultimate goal, here, isn’t it though?” Sandy asks lightly. He feels a headache beginning behind his eyes and wonders if spending those hours underground was catching up to him. “But it’s not going to be the Luminous Academy because, of course, there are still no Light Adepts.”

            Pitch helps him carry the chronicles into the study. “Anyway,” Sandy continues, “like I said earlier, I don’t like seeing untrained people with power around. It’s more dangerous for them than it is for others—mostly because others think it’s the other way around.”

            “It’s going to be rather awkward, isn’t it?” Pitch asks as they continue distributing books throughout the ground floor rooms. “You’ll be needing to use a lot of the knowledge I’ve gathered, without revealing the source. Are you going to expect me to be hovering by your shoulder throughout these lessons, whispering points of clarification in your ear?”

            “Don’t be daft, Pitch. At best I’d end up looking like a madman. I think my plan will be far better for all of us.”

            “And what would that be?” Pitch asks, clearing away the tea things from the coffee table and deciding that it probably needed a good scrub before it should hold any of the volumes they had brought back.

            “Why, the simplest solution, of course. I’m going to introduce you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I've made any mistakes with the timeline, I'm sorry. What's a day or two between friends? I need to write this out, I know.


	13. Root and Trunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy begin their investigation of the books taken from the dream cloisters and find a few very curious things. Jack and Bunny visit the house on Fountain Square; Sandy asks Bunny an important question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The current Lunar King's name is Apolyon. It would make sense to refer to him by his name earlier in the story, but I just plain forgot until now.

            “I’m still not on board with this plan,” Pitch says as they begin their investigation of the books, fresh mugs of tea in their hands. “It’s not good to have more people know a secret than absolutely necessary. Even if they don’t want to turn me in, they might reveal something by accident, and that won’t be helpful for anything you’re trying to do.”

            “I don’t need you to be on board with it now, I need you to be on board with it by the day after tomorrow,” Sandy says, setting his tea down on the table and examining the spines of the books. “Now, we did make a point of taking the oldest books, but perhaps we should start with the newest of the oldest? It might help us work our way up to the language of the older ones—and the printing, and the handwriting. I glanced inside some of them and I could barely make out a thing.”

            “Sandy, you’re not listening!” Sandy looks up in surprise at Pitch’s raised voice, and he has the grace to look mildly embarrassed. “I know that revealing my presence here is the best solution for the particular problem we have. I just—I just want you to acknowledge that there’s the potential for it to go very, very wrong. You’ve made me nervous all day, Sandy. Cutting yourself off from sunlight, taking the books—and I know I was a party to that—inviting Bunny to talk about magic, and now deciding that I’m going to be part of that conversation as well. I know you’re powerful, but we don’t really know what we’re doing right now. Please—just—I don’t know! Can you be a little less blithe about all this?”

            Sandy sighs and sits down in an armchair. “I’m sorry, Pitch. When you lay it all out I can see it, but it’s hard for me to think that way moment by moment. The unconscious currents in me call for revelation, and, well, you shouldn’t be forced to be a secret because no one should.

            “If I seem blithe…maybe I do trust my powers too much. Maybe I trust what I was able to say in Shining too much. Maybe I haven’t been explaining myself enough. I don’t feel blithe, Pitch. I feel like a beacon that’s about to have a reflector placed behind it. Maybe I’m not worrying about what changes I’m causing because it’s so clear to me that something has to change.”

            Pitch sits down in another armchair and drinks his tea. “Rosehip with honey,” he murmurs, wrapping his long fingers around the cup. “My favorite this time—not what’s good for me?”

            “I wanted to give you something like that,” Sandy says, though his smile doesn’t return. “I want to give you everything you love, while I still can, while there’s still time. I do know that there’s a lot that can go wrong, Pitch. I just don’t worry in the same way that you do.”

            “I understand,” Pitch says, taking another sip of his tea. The drink is sweet, warm, and fragrant, and he wonders how many things like it he’ll have that he associates with Sandy before he can associate Sandy with Sandy again. “Let’s start looking for a way to save ourselves and the kingdom in these pages, then.”

 

            By the time they’re both ready to retire for the evening, they’ve only found one piece of information that seems suggestive of what they want to learn. In the chronicle that was recorded before and after Sandy’s apparent battle with Pitch and during the subsequent Dimming, they learn that the Spring Equinox exactly ten Springs after the Dream War was the first during which no new light adepts were found.

            “So does that mean that whatever caused the Dimming happened with our battle? Or ten years after?” Pitch asks.

            “I think it means whatever happened…it happened at least in the same year as the Dream War.” Sandy rests his head in his hand, rereading the page in the chronicle. “Oh, who am I trying to fool? Whatever happened was no doubt related to the Dream War and our battle. There was nothing else that happened that year that was so out of the ordinary.” Sandy frowns. “And that would mean it was my fault that we are alone now,” he says quietly.

            Pitch shakes his head. “Of every light adept involved in that incident, I think that you are the one least likely to be responsible for any disaster that followed.”

            “Everyone did what they were supposed to, except me,” Sandy muses. “I loved you and I kept loving you…”

            Pitch shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t try to place one of them over Sandy’s. “Well, even in that case, I think it would be me that would properly take the blame. But I don’t think that’s the case. You’re just feeling that way because it’s night.”

            Sandy yawns. “I suppose you’re right. I mean, back then…I was asking Light for a lot of guidance. I don’t think I could have done anything really wrong…at least by Light.”

 

            The next day, before they return to the books, Pitch takes the time to explain what he can about his initiation into shadow apprenticeship to Sandy. When he comes to the end of his tale, mentioning how the water in the cave tasted like moonpool water, Sandy’s expression turns more thoughtful than before.

            “What if the moonpools are our source? Like the soul vines, or the lifeblood rivers?”

            Pitch is silent for a long moment. “It would be quite neat, wouldn’t it? The moonpool water as the source of the Lunar Kingdom’s magic, and now that it’s been bricked up, the magic is gone. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? All the other sources are natural. The moonpools were made by people. It seems strange that the source would be able to be confined in such a way.”

            “I suppose that’s true,” Sandy says slowly. “And if the springs that fed the moonpools were our sources, why would moonpool water occur only in such small or inaccessible areas? But then again, the Empire of the Five Beacons is vast, and there is only one heartflame pit. On the other hand, the heartflame pit is impossible to contain by any human means, and I doubt it ever will be. Or so you’ve told me.”

            Pitch realizes another objection to Sandy’s suggestion, and though he’s reluctant to bring it up, he does so anyway. “There’s one more problem,” he says, looking away from Sandy and out the window, watching a few early-falling leaves blow by. “You said ‘our’ source. If you were referring to us, here, instead of you and the past light adepts, the idea doesn’t make sense. Or it doesn’t as far as everything we’ve ever learned or experienced goes. Light and shadow magic wouldn’t have the same source.”

            “I didn’t even realize I said that.” Sandy stands up and begins to look through the books. The conversation seems like one he should stop, even if the feeling only stems from old taboos, and he can’t sit still for it. “I suppose that since you’re the only other magic user I’ve talked to in so long—notwithstanding the past few days—that is…shadow adepts were only found in the Lunar Kingdom, weren’t they?”

            Pitch nods.

            “And you were able to become a shadow adept in only three years, rather than twelve, which is a full apprenticeship in light…and I can’t imagine that learning that discipline was any easier than the way of light—was it?”

            “To tell the truth,” Pitch says, “and you will probably not be surprised by this, I was something of a shadow prodigy. Like you were a prodigy of Light.”

            “I wasn’t a prodigy, Pitch. I was talented, but how far those talents were to develop was only revealed…later.”

            “Anyone who had eyes to see should have known that you were going to surpass the others.” Pitch turns from the window only to see Sandy smiling indulgently at him and returns his gaze to the square outside. “In any case, I had talent for shadow. But you’re right. There was nothing about learning it that should have been easier than learning light. As I remember it now, most of my three years were spent learning Erebusian and learning…a different way to think. Other than that…I don’t know if I want to explain this.”

            “It may be necessary,” Sandy says. “Please tell me. I have a guess about what you’re going to say, but I don’t want to lead you to it. And again, remember—there is no one to penalize you for what you reveal.”

            “Indeed,” says Pitch, and shakes his head a little. “I apologize. Over the years I have developed a habit at times of emphasizing the difference between us…it helps, a little, when you are before me and I must act as though you are far more than an arm’s length away…and, more than that, I did not want to dwell upon…oh, I must stop circling around this. Very well. Sandy, the reason I was able to complete my training in shadow so quickly was that the fundamental ways in which shadow adepts relate to Shadow are almost identical to those in which light adepts relate to Light. I didn’t have to learn how to feel magic in a way that I could direct. I didn’t have to learn how to think about gathering an intangible substance into one that could be drunk. The things that require most practice for both disciplines are the same, and I already knew how to do those things.”

            Sandy nods. “And would you also say that the similarities you found between the learning of light and shadow were not found in your travels among other adepts?”

            “That’s right. There were a few similarities, yes, but for air, water, fire, and earth, the way they thought of the driving force of their magic was very different from how light and shadow adepts thought of theirs.”

            Sandy pauses with his hand on one of the chronicles. “A reflection is the opposite of the thing it reflects, yet people look at their reflections to know exactly what they look like.”

            “I don’t like that,” Pitch says. “The reflection isn’t real.”

            “Well, I can’t come up with anything better right now,” Sandy says. “Would you go get the notebook we’re using to collect our findings? This book seems promising right now.”

 

            “Do you think this is odd?” Pitch asks Sandy, pointing to one of the myriad one-line entries of events that the light adepts of several centuries ago found important.

            “That might be difficult to tell in this volume,” Sandy says, moving slightly closer to Pitch on the sofa so he can get a better view of the entry he’s indicating. “Since nothing had yet been standardized when it was written.” He peers at the page. “L.Y. 607 Mannius I crowned as L.K. Construction of Luminous Academy begins.”

            “And here, in the margin.” Pitch taps a long finger against the vellum.

            “It’s so faded. Move over.” Pitch does, and Sandy summons a small light. He bends over the page, his nose almost touching it before he reads out the words. “Interregnum beginning in L.Y. 587 with death of L.K. Sable ends.” He sits up. “All right, so this being odd is not difficult to tell at all. I’ve never heard of a Lunar King having a name like Sable, and while I knew that the Luminous Academy was founded in 613, I didn’t know that the building of it started at the same time as the ending of an Interregnum.” Sandy frowns. “In fact, I think, though I cannot be sure, that I had been taught that the Lunar Kingdom was unique in that we had never had an Interregnum throughout our history.”

            “You still didn’t read it all,” Pitch says. “Look again, even more closely, at ‘interregnum’.”

            Sandy leans forward again. There’s another word—no, two, underneath the one, and the two combined are shorter than the one. It looks as though the ink has been washed off, but the quill used to write the first two was sharp enough to leave an impression. Sandy squints, and Pitch can tell the exact moment when he deciphers what had been written there, because his eyes widen at once. “Civil war!” he exclaims. “Now, I know that I was never taught about any civil war, much less one that lasted for twenty years.”

            Pitch smiles without humor. “Yes, and it seems like it might be something worth knowing, doesn’t it?”

            “And worth _not_ knowing. If what’s written in the margin here had just been a normal entry, I’d just think it was something I had forgotten. After all, the history of the Lunar Kingdom wasn’t what we spent the most time studying at the Luminous Academy. And even if it had been…” he pauses and looks into the low fire. “The civil war mentioned here began and ended almost a thousand years before we were born. A thousand years is more than enough to erase almost anything.”

            “But not the Mannius dynasty,” Pitch notes. “Apolyon has posted his genealogy in the papers, all the way back to Mannius I, or, as he’s labeled there, Mannius the Great.”

            “Did the papers say what he was great for?” Sandy asks.

            “Standardizing record-keeping, expanding the Great Library, and establishing the Luminous Academy—thus saving the Lunar Kingdom from the difficult problems of fragmentary evidence that make it nearly impossible to determine if anything that happened before his reign was fantasy or fact.”

            “How interesting, then, that his descendant seems to be directly involved in making the records of the past even more fragmented,” Sandy says bitterly. Pitch only nods. “Well, let’s write it down. Civil war. King Sable. Mannius I, who wrote the records. But even if Mannius didn’t want to record a civil war as such, why is there such wariness even in this light adept chronicle? I’d always thought the light adepts were primarily separate from the crown’s influence. But then again, I’d also always thought that the idea of the Luminous Academy began with the light adepts themselves.”

 

            They find nothing more that relates unequivocally to their search that day, and when Pitch suggests that they not return to the books after dinner, Sandy agrees willingly. He plans to spend this evening and tomorrow morning preparing for Jack and Bunny’s visit—choosing the proper lights for himself, thinking back to when he had just begun his apprenticeship—and anything important that might be found in the books now would most likely be troubling. And even though the problems Jack and Bunny face are no doubt related to the larger problem he and Pitch are trying to solve, he knows that both young men have more pressing concerns that magical knowledge can help immediately, while understanding 1500 years history cannot. He says as much to Pitch, whose expression hovers between surprise and disappointment for a moment.

            “I should hope that you aren’t planning on doing this alone.” He pulls on the ends of his sleeves. “By which I mean to say, since I will be part of the meeting, perhaps we should prepare for it together?”

            “Oh.” Sandy smiles. “Of course. I’m still…still getting used to having you around.”

            “Does the arrangement meet with your approval?” Pitch asks, matching Sandy’s smile with his own.

            “Yes, Pitch. It does. A few improvements could be made; however, we will not be talking of those.”

            Pitch sees a small line of anxiety appear near the corner of Sandy’s mouth and wishes he could do something, anything, to take it away—which, as he realizes an instant later, is no doubt half the problem. He opens his mouth to apologize, but Sandy shakes his head.

            “No, Pitch. It’s all right. I knew it would be difficult, us staying in the same house. All I ask is that you realize that when you tease me, you are not teasing someone unmoved, despite my loyalty to Light that overwhelms all else. As you can see by the way I bring this up so readily.”

            “I understand. I suppose it is better than the alternative.”

            “Are you suggesting the indifference could even be possible for us? Even if we truly had begun as enemies, I doubt we could have remained such throughout the years.”

            “Is that how we will explain why I’m at Fountain Square when Frost and Bunny visit?”

            Sandy laughs. “All right, I’m not sure it would sound very credible at all when said to another person. But the elements will be there, with all the careful phrasing that avoids lies. I don’t want deceive as I reveal—but I also think that the idea of us as lovers is perhaps a revelation that brings up too many questions that have nothing to do with learning magic.”   _And it’s not as though we’ll give each other away with thoughtlessly intimate touch. Anything else, they probably won’t notice._

            Pitch nods. “I’ll leave the talking to you, then. Or at least most of it. It won’t do for me to just silently loom over you.”

            They go to the kitchen to begin to ready themselves for the discussion they’ll have on magic tomorrow, as it’s the room where all of the light is currently stored and the room that contains the fewest items that would be sensitive to any mistakes they might make while dredging up their memories of how they learned light.

            “I shouldn’t have thought of doing this alone,” Sandy says as he takes out a bottle of sunshine from a Summer afternoon and pours some of it into a shallow bowl.

            “If all goes well, you won’t have to think of doing things alone anymore.” Pitch takes a small bottle of the shadow of a moonless night from his carrying case, but doesn’t pour it out. He absently taps the seal and wonders if any starlight had been gathered into it by accident when he collected it.

            “You mean that you’ll be with me?” Sandy asks, looking up from the light.

            “Oh—yes—I mean, I thought I meant that there’d be more light adepts. Because…even with me, you’re still alone, aren’t you? I can’t sing the songs, I can’t celebrate Shortday, I can’t help you gather light…”

            “But you can help me brew dreams,” Sandy says. “And the difference between being alone and being with you is truly great.”

            “Sorry,” Pitch says. “Being invisible in public must be getting to me.”

 

            They begin preparing themselves for the next day by attempting to recall as much as they can about first learning how to work with light. In this, Pitch proves invaluable, as in his private moments he has not left off the memory work he began on the ship and so his recollections of this time are closer to the surface of his mind. Furthermore, as their conversation progresses, it becomes clear that Pitch’s memories might be more helpful for teaching beginners, since for Sandy, so much of light came naturally that it’s difficult to put the experience of such wakening power into words.

            “Maybe I stopped using my body as a conduit because I was simply lazy,” Sandy muses, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Just now, they’ve been making conscious efforts to detect their own magic, as it is held within their bodies, and, while Sandy’s not sure how it’s made Pitch feel, the awareness of the complex network of light all through his skin and flesh that converges in vastly intricate tangles at his head, heart, and hands is making him feel far too awake, and far too much like shouting out words that would smash things to pieces, for this time of night. He’s sure what he felt as an apprentice wasn’t this complicated, and tries to force his awareness of himself to good purpose in fetching the memories.

            That, at least, would distract him from the other bizarre reaction he’s having. When he looks over at Pitch, who has successfully brought the shadow within him to the forefront of his awareness and whose skin is thus laced with a slowly moving filigree of darkness, he can’t tell if he’s attracted or repulsed by the sight, yet unidentifiable as the feeling is, it’s very strong. It makes him glad that he’s sitting on the other side of the table now. It also makes him want to bite something. Maybe Pitch. How could he be thinking such un-light-adept-like thoughts when he’s more aware of the light within him than he has been in years?

            “Honestly, Sandy? You realize that’s just as silly to say as if you’d learned to fly and blamed yourself for being too impatient to walk.” The shadows are even in the whites of Pitch’s eyes now. Sandy would like to study the effect, but he can’t predict what he’ll do if he does.

            Instead, he leans back and stares up at the ceiling. “All right, I see your point. But I guess as soon as I learned about Light itself more, I knew my body didn’t need to always act as the conduit. After all, it was always passing into so many other bodies and minds…”

            “So is that what Jack needs to recognize? I know in my case there was a lot of rote practice and mental tricks.”

            “I wouldn’t be surprised if we needed that,” Sandy answers. “My understanding was based on the community I was in. Jack believes he’s the only one with his kind of magic.”

 

            When Jack arrives at Fountain Square the next day, he’s wearing a long, hooded cloak—and also completely alone. “No bodyguards?” Sandy asks after welcoming him.

            “No,” Jack says. “They’re still back at the palace, guarding the entrance to my apartments. I mean—they know I’m gone, but I think it’s better if anyone who thinks to ask assumes that I’m alone in my rooms. It’s what the king seems to approve of when I’m not out and about doing what he’s asked me to. I mean, I assume. He still hasn’t sent me any personal messages or called for an audience.

            “Sometimes I wonder…” Jack looks down at the floor, and Sandy can see him tracing the gentle curves of the pattern of the tiles with his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if he still thinks of me as a person. Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t.”

            Sandy frowns. “And why would that be?”

            “Well, like I said, I’m dangerous. I’d love to be able to be normal—no.” He sighs. “No, I wouldn’t want to be normal. That’s part of the problem. I really want to use my magic, but it can be deadly so easily. I’ve been lucky that it hasn’t. So if the king thinks of me more as a tool than a person, I’m sure it will be safer for everyone.” He looks from the floor to Sandy. “People already like doing dangerous things around me. They let their fingertips linger on mine…I don’t know why. But I know it makes me uneasy because they’re playing with fire—or, you know, the opposite.”

            “I see,” Sandy says, and indeed he does. The mental blocks Jack has constructed for himself are going to make teaching him all the more difficult, but here is another point at which Pitch will be helpful. As he had explained that morning, he had felt twisted inside, like nothing he was doing should have been right or possible, when he had first begun practicing shadow magic, though after being claimed by Shadow he could not escape from its thrilling in his veins.

            “That’s why I wore these boots and gloves today,” Jack says, holding up his hands. “I don’t want to do anything by accident, even though I really don’t like wearing either. They make me feel like I’m trying to watch everything through a dark glass.”

            “That’s something we’re going to talk about today,” Sandy explains as he leads Jack toward the kitchen. “I hope that by the time you leave you’ll be one step closer to feeling sure you won’t do anything with your powers accidentally—and that you won’t feel so muffled by mere leather or cloth.” He chooses not to mention that the latter is far more important than the former right now, though in the next moment he realizes that Jack’s concern might be valid, and not just a part of the network of lies and implications he’s been fed to control him. It may have been difficult for light apprentices to do any magic by accident, and it had always been impossible for them to hurt anyone with their power, but Jack wasn’t a light apprentice. His powers hadn’t been guided before their explosive debut.

            “It looks so ordinary,” Jack comments, looking around the room. Copper kettle on a twenty-year-old stove, large wooden table showing scars smoothed with use, pots hung on hooks on the walls. “That is, I don’t mean to be rude…”

            Sandy smiles at him. “It _is_ ordinary. Light adepts are human, you know.”

            Jack glances down at the floor. “You’re trying to put me at ease, and I like that. But I know you know why it’s hard for me and any of us to think of you as simply human. You’re immortal...magical.”

            “You’re magical, too, Jack.”

            “Well, I don’t think I’m immortal. All I’m saying, is that it’s a bit strange to imagine you boiling water for tea.”

            “I assure you, I eat and drink quite regularly, even when not at afternoon teas laden with unspoken political implications.”

            Jack laughs a little and looks up. “But unlike most everyone else, you also drink light.”

            Sandy nods. “True. Not everything in the cupboards of this kitchen is entirely ordinary. Would you like to try some yourself when we’re done? I’d offer it now, but I’d like you to start paying attention to your magic without the influence of my kind of magic first.”

            Jack’s expression is thoughtful as he nods. “That makes sense…so you really think my magic is something that’s unique to me—and that I can still control it?”

            Sandy indicates that he should take a seat at the table. “I’m not sure yet whether your magic is unique to you, Jack. I’m not familiar with much outside of light magic, after so many years spent on my island. As for controlling it, what do you think you’ve been doing so far? That staircase you built out of ice looked to me like you were demonstrating some impressive control.”

            Jack shakes his head. “Thanks, but I know I don’t have my powers under control. I can always feel the magic within me—or, well, the ice. It’s not something I can ever ignore. I can never relax. It’s only a heavy sleeping medicine that I take every night that makes me able to live in the palace.”

            Sandy frowns deeply. “Are you saying that you’re drugged every night?”

            “Well, I have to be.” Jack looks surprised that Sandy hasn’t immediately grasped this, and Sandy chooses not to press the subject for now, though it’s one of the most troubling things he’s heard about Jack’s life so far.

            “Just now I mentioned that I don’t know much about magic that isn’t based on light,” he says.

            “Is that going to be a big problem? Will you still be able to help me at all?”

            “I think so,” Sandy says. “But I’m not going to helping you alone. There’s someone else that’s been studying the different varieties of magic as much as he can for quite some time. He’s here, and I’d like to introduce you.”

            “All right.”

            “Yes…” Sandy taps his fingers on the table. “Jack, as a light adept, it’s sometimes difficult to describe things in an oblique way. So I’m not sure how to prepare you to meet this individual without just revealing everything.”

            “I need to be prepared?”

            “That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? All right. Let me see…just as you may have heard many things about me that are not exactly true—I know there are legends about me—I am sure you have also heard many things about this man that are not exactly true. When I bring him into this room, I ask you to keep an open mind, and trust me.”

            Jack smiles a lopsided smile. “Who are you talking about, anyway? The Nightmare King?”

            Sandy begins to reply, but he’s interrupted by movement at the entrance to the kitchen. “As a matter of fact, yes,” Pitch says.

            _You are an ass_ , Sandy mouths at Pitch. The original plan they had made between them was that at the right moment, Sandy would go and get Pitch from the study. Pitch smiles at him and Sandy rolls his eyes. At least he hadn’t appeared in the center of the room in a cloud of smoke.

            “Jack,” Sandy begins, turning back towards him. Thankfully, the boy doesn’t seem inclined to attack or run away, though his expression is wary. “You’ve probably been told the story of how I drove the Nightmare King out of the city.” Jack nods. “I don’t know how that story has changed recently, but even before I realized I wasn’t aging, that story had been changed in the telling so that it fit patterns that people knew. Once I and others realized that I was immortal, it changed even more. When it turned out that the Nightmare King—or Pitch Black, as he is known to me and will be known to you—was immortal as well, it changed further. Yet something like what all the versions of that story describe did happen.

            “Most of the other stories you may have heard about Pitch and me don’t even have that distant connection to the past.”

            “So you’re…not enemies?” Jack looks from one to the other. “But I thought that light adepts and shadow adepts all hated each other. When I was recovering from the blizzard,” he says, dropping his eyes to the table, “a nurse read me stories and even sang me nursery rhymes when she thought I was asleep. I forgot how this one goes, but…the idea was that light fought with shadow to burn away all the lies in the world, and shadow wanted to snuff out all the light and leave everyone in ignorance and fear.” He looks tentatively up at Pitch. “That’s all I know about light and shadow. I didn’t mean—”

            “Light adepts and shadow adepts approach magic in very different ways,” Sandy says. “And for nearly all of the recorded history of the light adepts as I know it, these ways were thought to be not just different but opposing. However, Pitch’s studies have shown him certain things that imply that maybe this is not the case, which is important for today, with you, because it gives me hope that even your unknown magic may be guided by principles known to us as light adept and shadow adept.

            “And, Jack? After the Dimming, Pitch and I were the only two remaining adepts of this kingdom. You know how difficult it is to have magic and no community. Even had we hated each other to begin with, I do not know how we could exist so long without managing to overcome some of our differences.”

            “All…right,” Jack says slowly. “So, um, Pitch. Why did you take my records?”

            Pitch raises his eyebrows. “I had nearly forgotten I had been accused of that. I know you only have my word, Jack, but I didn’t take them.”

            Jack sighs and leans back in his chair. “Well, I believe you. When they told me about it, I couldn’t figure out a motive. It would have just been…pantomime villainy. Pitch Black vexes the king again!” He smiles a little. “But now that I’m meeting you, I can understand why they’d be expecting that. I mean—just the way you move—it’s pretty unnerving.”

            “It’s entirely out of my control, I assure you,” Pitch says, stepping towards the table. Sandy looks over at him, slightly confused. What would be unnerving about Pitch to those who weren’t light adepts? He forces himself to observe Pitch as if he is unfamiliar with him, and in a moment feels like smacking himself in the forehead. How could he have forgotten about the inhuman fluidity of Pitch’s movements? Everyone could see that, just as everyone could see the way shadows seemed to linger about him, darker and more solid than around anyone else. No wonder people felt uneasy around him. Hadn’t he himself been made wary by these characteristics, so many years ago? Somewhere along the way, though, he must have stopped thinking of them as warning signs of a shadow adept and started thinking of them as ways to recognize Pitch.

            “And you don’t _mind_ that?” Jack asks.

            Before either Pitch or Sandy can begin to answer this surprisingly difficult question, an object resting on a table built into the wall catches Jack’s attention.

            “Where’d you get that?” he asks, pointing toward the bottle marked with the symbol of the Lifeblood River. “It looks so…familiar.”

            “How is it familiar to you, Jack?” Sandy asks, making sure to keep his voice level and calm.

            Jack gets up and walks over to the table that holds the bottle. He picks up the bottle and brushes his fingers over the symbol pressed into the glass. “I’m not sure…it’s part of the earliest memories I have now. I was wandering in the dark…I don’t know where I was, or if the place I remember is even real. But I know that whether it was real or not, I thought I was going to die of thirst. I found some stairs and climbed up them. I guess I must have thought that no matter what was on the surface, at least the people out there weren’t going to make me die of thirst. That’s what gave me the strength to do…I don’t remember. Something difficult. And then I was in a room full of these bottles, and I drank from them so gratefully.

            “And then I kept heading upwards toward day, but then when I left the room with the water, I realized why I must have been put in the dark place.”

            “Why was that?”

            “It was…the ice. It spread from my feet where they touched the floor and from my fingertips when I brushed them against the wall. And then I was somewhere within the palace. I’m lucky the guards didn’t kill me. So I must have been in the dark place, whatever it was, to protect other people from me. It’s almost funny, though. I feel like if I had spent my whole life down there, I’d be a really different person. So I guess it’s good that I lost my memory when I left that place.”

            Pitch catches Sandy’s eyes, a speaking look on his face. Sandy doesn’t have time to decipher it, though, because at that moment a knock on the front door draws the attention of all three.

            “Is someone else…?” Jack doesn’t complete his question, and Sandy makes a calming gesture.

            “Don’t worry. We are expecting another person. You’re not the only person in the city with untrained magic—and _no_ , they’re not dangerous. I’ll explain everything when I introduce you.”

 

            Bunny apologizes for being late. “Sometimes I have to actually be present right before I’m supposed to go off-duty, regardless of whether my work is done—it’s all up to the whim of the head gardener, and today was one of those days.”

            “It’s no problem,” Sandy says. “It’s likely better, actually. It would have been hard to manage the introductions if you had shown up sooner.”

 

            Introductions are difficult enough to manage with the situation as it is. Bunny is wary of Pitch not only because of the book theft story but also because of his association with the high floods of the previous Spring. Pitch’s answer to his query doesn’t reassure him much, either, though Sandy finds that he quite likes it.

            “I made no conscious call for the floods to be high this year, but I am reluctant to say there was no association. Perhaps what called me to return to the city this year was the same as that which called for the waters to be high.”

            “And what could the Serene have to do with a shadow adept?”

            Pitch raises his eyebrows and just as quickly lowers them. “Do you think that the Serene could be linked in such a way with Sandy, the light adept—the last light adept of this land?”

            Bunny reluctantly nods.

            “Then,” continues Pitch, “you must believe it could be linked in such a way with me, for just as Sandy is the light adept now, so am I the shadow adept.”

            “I know you’re not an ordinary shadow adept,” Bunny says, frowning. “Sera, my dearest, has told me some stories about you. In some of the old ones you’re known only as the Traitor.”

            Pitch’s nostrils flare, but with a gesture from Sandy that Bunny can’t see, he forces himself to be calm. “A convenient epithet for those who do not wish to say the name of a shadow adept, as if I had nothing better to do than listen for it and send nightmares against those who would use it. But you are right. I’m not an ordinary shadow adept, and I hope, throughout the course of this day, that you begin to see how beneficial that may be to you.”

            Bunny quiets at that, glancing at Sandy, and he can see that it’s not because he’s accepted Pitch’s words that he’s stopped arguing, but out of respect for his host. As he introduces Jack, Sandy is profoundly grateful that Bunny hadn’t been raised with _all_ of the Selenean stories. If that had been the case, he might well have not listened to Pitch even as much as he had.

            To Sandy’s surprise, his introduction of Jack to Bunny also proves tense—Bunny didn’t appreciate the havoc that Jack’s accidental blizzard had wrought on growing things, for one, and he almost continues with some other grievance, but, again, he looks to Sandy and stops. “It’s clear to me that the king was just using Sandy when he was making all those laws,” he says. “It’s only fair, I guess, if I wait and see if you’re being used, too.”

            Sandy looks around at all of them, pausing at each pair of eyes so strikingly different from the rest they see every day. “While I know that the tensions here have not been completely relaxed,” he says, “I hope now that we will be able to have a civilized conversation about magic.”

            The others nod. Bunny takes a seat at the table, and Sandy returns to his. He glances at Pitch, who subtly gestures at him to continue. Sandy takes a deep breath. Yes, this was his idea, and he’s the one who should lead. But with two students here before him what’s most readily coming to mind is the long-standing determination he had as an apprentice that he would never become a professor at the Luminous Academy upon gaining his mastership. Then again, if there are to be any new light apprentices, he’s going to have to teach them someday, so he might as well start getting some practice now.

            “All right. Since Jack is completely untrained, I’m going to start by discussing some very basic concepts—some of which you may be familiar with, Bunny, since you had your mother to teach you some things, but it will be good that you have that information. Each form of magic has different vocabularies its adepts use, but for all who are just learning to…cope…with the fact that they have magic, the practical result is similar and so I think the…magical action might be as well. Pitch, Bunny, and I will be able to talk about our experiences from three different frameworks, Jack. Hopefully one of those will help you understand what I would like you to be able to do with your particular kind of magic.”

            “And what exactly do you want me to be able to do?” Jack asks.

            “It may take some time, but I want you to be able to sense the magic within you as something not tied to your physical body.”

            “But I’ve been trying to do that for so long!” Jack exclaims. He explains further, bouncing his knees up and down. “Ever since the king took me in, I’ve been working to try and think of the ice as an alien thing, as not really me, but it never works! It’s stronger than me! It fights back!”

            Bunny leans away from him slightly, but Pitch leans forward. “That’s not what Sandy meant, Jack. If you’d have held back your outburst you’d have a clearer understanding of what he meant. Perhaps you’ll stay silent while I’m talking to you instead.”

            Jack opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it and swallows hard when he’s fully turned toward Pitch.

            “Good. Sandy did not say that he wanted you to think of your magic as separate from yourself. He said he wanted you to think of it as not tied to your physical body. I know this kingdom has not degenerated enough so that the concept of a non-physical self should be foreign to you.

            “In a way I am glad that your magic is fighting back against you, as it may make it easier for me to help you—my situation with shadow is much more like yours than Sandy’s with light. This will not be as pleasant as working with Sandy, but you aren’t in a generally pleasant situation now, are you?

            “So. At the moment you are uncomfortable with your magic. I understand. I was profoundly uncomfortable with shadow when it chose me, even though I knew there was no chance it had made a mistake. You will need to trick yourself into accepting it.”

            “And…um…why do I need to do this?”

            “Because you were able to muffle your abilities merely by wearing boots and gloves,” Sandy answers. “That’s more dangerous for you than it is for others. If you only channel your magic through your body, you’re vulnerable to physical control.”

            “You mean…” he looks from Sandy to Pitch and back again, “that with your help I wouldn’t have to worry about the ice spreading from my hands and feet? That that’s not something inherent about my power? Everything I do without shoes or gloves—I’ve had to concentrate so hard and…”

            “This should change that,” Pitch says. “Your magic is a part of you different from your body. Just as moving your arm does not require that you move your leg, neither does using your magic require that you use some part of your body.”

            “Sorry to interrupt,” Bunny says, “But this doesn’t really seem basic to me.” The other three turn to him and he continues, a little reluctantly. “I mean, if this’s basic, it’s something my mum could have taught me about, right? But I’ve never been taught anything like this. I—It’s more like something I’ve just started to think is possible, as I’ve kept working my magic on my own.”

            Both surprised and disappointed, Sandy makes sure to reveal neither, and a moment’s thought tells him how this seeming setback can be turned to their advantage. “That may be perfect, then, for the kind of work we hope to do here,” Sandy says. “If you’ve been approaching the ability to use your magic separate from your physicality without even knowing it was possible, then knowing it is possible will no doubt make it quite simple to finally do so now. And, if you’re willing, for Jack’s sake, you can talk about the process that led you to believe it was possible. You’ve now in the position of an advanced student in comparison to Jack.” He pauses for a moment. “Like a mentor.”

            Pitch shakes his head ever so slightly, but his gesture is unnoticed as Bunny more emphatically refuses.

            “I’m no mentor,” he says, “and I didn’t come here just so I could help Jack Frost.” He sighs. “But, Sandy, I believe what you said about it being dangerous if I only know how to control my magic with my body. I want to learn how to not do that. So…I will talk.” He rests his hands on the table, one on top of the other. “The first thing my mum taught me about earth magic was that each piece of magic an earth adept does, no matter what it is, has both a trunk and a root. The trunk part is what everyone can see—the tree growing overnight, the crops flourishing with no rain—while the root part is what only earth adepts can see and it’s…this is hard to explain. The root is like the trunk, but it’s also connected with other roots. The root is the way that we know that no earth adept is totally independent from the others—and no earth magic user, for that matter, though I don’t know if they mention that in the schools.

            “But for me, since I’ve been here, where there aren’t a whole lot of Verdans around, much less earth adepts, I didn’t need to think about the root part all that much. I could have shallow roots, because there was nothing around to bother the trunk part of the magic I used—oh, I don’t know if I was clear—it’s like an ideal, y’see, to have trunk and root be equal, but it almost never works out like that. Some people are better at thinking of the trunk, and some people are better at thinking of the root. We’ve got this story of Huma, who tended one dandelion every spring and because she did so, she was able to say not only how the crops should be rotated in her whole valley, but also how many offspring the animals and people there would have, and which human children would be best and happiest as earth adepts. That’s root magic.

            “Ah, I’m rambling,” Bunny says, running a hand down his face.

            “It’s very interesting rambling to me,” Sandy says, and Pitch nods.

            “If you say so. I’ll try to finish this quick, though. Anyway, so, trunk and root. I didn’t have to think about root magic here, and so for a long time I didn’t. But then the more and more I worked in the garden the more I realized that even trunk magic dealt a lot with what you can’t see just on first glance—real roots, I mean. And then I thought that maybe if I didn’t understand root magic I wouldn’t understand trunk magic either. I figured the way to start understanding root magic, with no one to teach me, was to find where the roots were in myself—and that’d be the unseen. The non-physical, I suppose. I think I was making progress.”

            “I’m sure you were,” says Sandy. He looks to Pitch, who wears an unreadable expression. “Pitch, would you mind working with Jack for a little while? I’d like to speak with Bunny a bit more, but I don’t want to leave Jack feeling ignored.”

            “Of course.” Pitch stands, and beckons for Jack to follow him.

 

            Alone with Bunny, Sandy finds that he’s easily talked through the sensing of his magic—“Now that I know it’s there, it seems like it should have been impossible to ignore”—and Sandy explains that he should now try to do the kind of magic he usually does without the body channeling he’s been used to.

            “Among light adepts we had the Shining Tongue and many, many songs and harmonies to help along non-bodily channeling.” Sandy looks away from Bunny, and Bunny notices his face fall at the word “harmonies”. “Do the earth adepts do anything like that?”

            “I don’t know what the earth adepts do,” Bunny says, frowning. “That’s one of the things my mom told me they always kept secret. That’s why it took me so long to try to do this whole separation—”

            “Not separation.”

            “Well, whatever this is that I’ve been trying and you’ve just been helping me with. I wasn’t taught to think that way. The closest thing I know is the Litany my mom taught me. I don’t know if that’s still too physical, though. What it is, is this chant that links what I always thought were nonsense words to most parts of the body. When I was a kid she used it to help make me focus.”

            “Do you have to move your body while you speak the Litany?” Sandy asks, and Bunny shakes his head. “That should do, then.” They sit in silence for several moments. “With practice, no one will be able to bind you.”

            “As long as there are plants around,” Bunny corrects him with a small smile. “I’m not like you, my raw material rising with the sun.”

            “Sorry. I’m still having trouble thinking about different kinds of magic.”

            “Don’t worry,” Bunny says. “I…I’m very grateful that you’ve offered to help me and Jack. Things aren’t…growing straight…in this kingdom right now. I think it’s important for both of us to know more about what we can do. Be able to defend ourselves. Though in my case doing that might make things worse for the other Verdans still here.”

            “Why?” Sandy asks, surprised.

            “Think of different magic again, Sandy. Light magic’s the only kind that can’t harm others. I’m very dangerous.”

            “All this fear…” Sandy drums his fingers on the table. “It’s the king’s fear. And it’s taken hold on the people because of lies and little magic. No one knows what’s really going on. And the king doesn’t want them to, because…why? He already has power…”

            “I don’t think I can help you with figuring that out,” Bunny says with a smile, and Sandy shakes his head.

            “Sorry. There is one question I’d like to ask you, that maybe you _would_ know the answer to.”

            “Go ahead.”

            Sandy doesn’t speak at once. He lays his hands flat on the table and looks at a knot in the wood between them. He worries his bottom lip, as if he has to wear a hole in his mouth before the proper words will come. “Bunny. If…circumstances made it seem desirable…would it be possible for an earth adept to only learn trunk magic? Or only root magic?”

            Bunny pauses even longer before answering than Sandy did before asking. “I’m not the person to ask,” he says. “But…just based on the stories and lore my mom told me…I think it would be possible for someone to be _taught_ only root magic or only trunk magic. But deep down…it would be impossible to really separate them. I don’t know why someone would do that, though. It would weaken the magic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sera's stories about Pitch weren't the worst of the lot, but none of the stories about Pitch are complimentary, and the Spring floods were really bad.
> 
> Tip for everyone in this world: Don't interrupt Sandy when Pitch is around, because Pitch really doesn't like it.


	14. The Illuminated Manuscript

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy cuts Jack's magic lesson with Pitch short due to the conversation he's just had with Bunny. Sandy and Pitch examine the oldest book they took from the storage room in the Dream Cloisters. Unable to read Old Selenean, the illuminations offer them a few answers, but raise many more questions.

            “You know you have the magic, Jack. You know how it flows from your fingers, and you’re afraid of that. But it’s never hurt you. Let yourself feel it,” Pitch says, standing a few feet away from Jack in the front parlor, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

            “But what about you?” Jack asks.

            “I’m hidden from whatever your magic might do.”

            “You can do that?”

            “Jack, focus. Pay attention to what happens when the ice comes. Don’t try to stop it, and don’t try to feel what’s under your fingertips. Try to feel what’s within them.”

            “But I can’t—”

            “If you could, Sandy wouldn’t have asked me to teach you, now would he?”

            Jack takes several quick, deep breaths, tensing his fingers as they rest on the table in front of him.

            “I didn’t realize this needed clarification,” Pitch says dryly, “but generally in my understanding focus is accompanied by _calm_.”

            “But the ice is spreading!”

            “How did it not spread when you had tea with Sandy?”

            “I had just frozen the river and built a staircase out of ice—I had worn myself out. I didn’t need to think about it.”

            “Of course.” Pitch nods and rolls his eyes, knowing that Jack’s too intent on the iced-over coffee table to notice. “Can you feel your magic now?”

            “No! This isn’t helping. I feel something, but if it’s my magic I can’t do anything with it. I’m trying to focus on it to hold it but it just keeps slipping out of my mind and the ice is still spreading!”

            “You feel it.” Pitch takes a step towards Jack. “Now let go of it. It’s not going to run away. It’s yours.”

            “But if I let go—”

            “You don’t know what will happen if you let go. You haven’t dared since the king found you.”

            “I don’t know how!”

            “Stop whatever it is you’re trying to do,” Pitch says sharply, and the presence of the Nightmare King at his elbow startles Jack into forgetting to try to contain the ice. He stares into Pitch’s strange gold-gray eyes for a long moment before Pitch blinks and steps back. “Now,” Pitch continues, “follow my instructions and do not add anything _extra_ on to them, not even a thought.”

            Jack nods.

            “Look down at the table and tell me what you see.”

            “The ice—” Jack realizes he’s stopped thinking about it and is about to try to grasp for control again, but Pitch’s glare stops him. He looks at the table again. “The ice has stopped spreading.”

            “Your magic, which you sensed as something impossible to control earlier: search for it with your mind, but detect it only. Do not try to envision doing anything else to it.”

            “I feel it.” Jack pauses. “I can’t tell if it’s in me or around me.”

            “I assume the answer is really both,” Pitch says. “Tell me, are you going to be asked to demonstrate your power anytime soon?”

            “I don’t know,” Jack replies, looking down. “I’m not given much warning anymore. I probably have at least a day, though.”

            “That’s not ideal.” Pitch frowns and paces a few steps back and forth. “But it will have to do. I’m not going to teach you anything else today. For as long as you can, I want you to practice _not_ using your magic, but being aware of it.”

            “But I was trying to do that before…” Jack wanders through the room, touching the furniture and smiling when his touch continues to bring no ice.

            “What you were trying to do before was not that.” Pitch surreptitiously touches the back of a chair where Jack’s hand had just been. The upholstery there doesn’t feel colder than the rest, and his frown lightens slightly. “You were trying to stop the Serene in flood with your bare hands rather than letting it flow to the sea.”

            “But what’s the sea here?” Jack asks.

            “ _That_ is not what you need to be thinking about right now.”

            Sandy walks into the room, Bunny a step or two behind him. “Pitch, I need to talk to you—Jack, have you made any progress? I’m sorry, you expected to be working with me and here I’ve been sequestered in the other room.”

            “I think,” Jack says. “Pitch told me to pay attention to my magic but not think about it? I’m not freezing things anymore.”

            Sandy nods, looking distracted. “Yes, that sounds like a good first step.” He spreads his hands, closes his eyes for a moment, and takes a deep breath through his nose. “All right. Bunny, Jack, I’m very sorry, but our time here needs to end earlier than I intended. I offer you late afternoon sunlight for peace of mind, though I freely admit I’m the one that greatly needs it.”

 

            As Sandy pours the light into small glass cups, adding water to those for Jack and Bunny with all the smooth deliberation of long practice and ritual, Pitch is tempted to drag the visitors bodily out of the house. Everything about Sandy has returned to the calm he presents to the world, save his eyes, and Pitch wonders how the others can accept such falsity, presented so transparently. When Jack smiles as Sandy hums a few notes before they drink, Pitch leaves the room so not to snap at him. The song is important, something important is happening in Sandy’s mind, and none of this is anything to be smiled at! The heels of Pitch’s shoes click loudly on the floor of the front hall as he walks back and forth, but he doesn’t care. Anything that would make Sandy dissemble for guests would no doubt be enough to shatter the Lunar Kingdom, a little more or less stomping won’t make a difference.

 

            The door to Fountain Square has not yet completely closed on Jack and Bunny when Pitch turns to Sandy. “Well? What was it that you needed to speak with me about?”

            Sandy beckons him toward the study where most of the books taken from the palace await them. “When I was talking with Bunny I gained a better metaphor than the one with the mirror you rejected last night.” As he explains what Bunny said about root and trunk magic and the teaching of it, his agitation of before doesn’t return in full force—the afternoon sunlight has done its job in that sphere as it is expected to—but Pitch sees that it has not been vanished away either. Naturally. Light can only make shadows disappear.

            Sandy looks over the books while he talks with such energetic intensity devoted to both tasks that Pitch is reminded of a fanciful idea he had heard of only a year or two ago, that of a perpetual motion machine. Whatever energy is in Sandy now will surely alter at some point, but as of now it looks as though he will remain this focused for a good long while.

            “Pitch, we can’t stay in the chronicles any longer. We need to decipher these oldest texts. I fear…I do not wish to say what I fear in case I am wrong.”

            “You do _not_ wish to say this thing.”

            Sandy smiles up at Pitch, a strange smile, as if either it or the face it rests on had just been switched with an identical copy. “It is uncharacteristic, is it not? Tell me, Pitch,” he continues, before Pitch can respond to the first question, “the earth adepts have their root and trunk. Have the fire adepts anything similar? The water adepts? The air?”

            “Flame and ash. Ice and steam. The gale and the calm.”

            “And what have we, Pitch? What have we?”

            “You have…sunlight and moonlight. I have…the dark of night and shadows cast in daylight.” Pitch’s voice has no conviction.

            “We’re too old to be placated by such answers, even if we ourselves give them,” Sandy says quietly. He turns to Pitch, the book he’s chosen held between both of his hands. It’s a small book, only about the size of Pitch’s hand, bound in dry and crumbling leather.

            “This is the oldest book of the ones we took,” Sandy says. “We’ll begin our search here.” He places the book on the large desk and frowns when he sees this simple action causes a few small fragments of the binding to flake off. “How did it seem so convincing, Pitch?” he asks as he gathers some of the records left behind by the last Counselors of Light to create a makeshift book cradle. “Why did we accept so easily that because we had no source, because we were taught nothing of dualities, that light was the superior path? Why was it not blazingly clear that something was _wrong_?”

            Pitch pulls up a chair next to Sandy’s at the desk. “Nothing seemed wrong. I am sure you remember those days, Sandy. So much light, so many adepts.”

            Sandy nods reluctantly. “I remember. There was nothing to indicate even the slightest sickness in the body of the adepts…at least, not until your ordeal. And the meaning of that was—is…difficult to see. But with so many of us reading the patterns around us every day…”

            Resting his hands flat on the edge of the desk, Pitch bites his lips before he begins to speak again. “There’s no evidence for this,” he says, “and the power it would take would have been incredible, and why it would have been done I do not know, but perhaps…” he trails off. “Let us read, first.  Perhaps light and shadow magic are truly sourceless and singular.”

            Sandy nods again, and with one youthful, gold-skinned hand, opens the ancient book.

 

            “This isn’t from the Luminous Academy,” Pitch says at once as they examine the first page.

            “No,” says Sandy, frowning deeply. “And benight everything that led to this moment. The letterforms would have difficult enough to deal with, but _this_!”

            “I take it, then, that you do not consider seeking out a translator a reasonable course of action?”

            Sandy looks up at Pitch. “Do you?”

            “You have the means and clout to hire one and move to the front of their line,” Pitch replies, and Sandy taps his fingers impatiently on the table. That’s not what he’s asking about and Pitch very well knows it. “And any translator with the skills needed for this project would certainly be interested in it. As to your question, though, my answer is no. I would prefer it if magic in the Lunar Kingdom did not generally become associated with book theft, even if circumstances have caused this to be true. Also, there might be some danger to the translator, depending on what the king knows about the contents of his private collection and what his ultimate goal is.”

            Sandy looks back to the book. The ink, turned more brown than black with age, is still surprisingly clear, though the shapes of the letters are joined in ways that were already archaic five centuries ago. The biggest obstacle to reading, however, is that this work is not written in Shining, Erebusian, or even the hybrid of those two languages that ornamented the wall of the moonpool. Instrumental as the languages of Light and Shadow were, any changes in usage had practical effects, and tended to take place slowly. For his part, Sandy had never encountered a text recognizably in Shining that he could not decipher with only slight trouble. Unfortunately, the text he and Pitch need to read now is in Old Selenean—at least Sandy guesses it to be so, based on a few letters—a language not mutually intelligible with modern Selenean. “This isn’t something we’d bring to one of the translators that work near the waterfront or in the merchant districts,” Sandy muses. “We’d need a historian who specialized in reading Old Selenean—the best there is, the closest possible translation is absolutely necessary here—and one who has more than a passing familiarity with the history of the light adepts.”

            “An uncommon pursuit, these days,” Pitch comments.

            “Even if the king isn’t keeping an eye on such scholars, he might if he started hearing rumors about this particular project. I don’t want to ask anyone to keep such thing a secret, and neither do I want to ask them to take actions that might call unwanted attention toward them. At least not as a first option.”

            “And so what do you propose as a first option?” Pitch asks.

            “Page through the book anyway,” Sandy says. “And hope that when it was written it was meant for more than just scholars. We ought to be able to glean something from the illuminations as long as they’re present.”

 

            The first large illumination appears only a few pages into the book. It consists of two human figures standing side by side, identical and androgynous save for their coloring. The one on the left side of the recto page, nearer the crease, has been given black hair and eyes, and only the lightest gray wash on their skin. They wear a robe of black, violet, and blue—“stoneblue,” Pitch murmurs, “still unfading, even in something so old.”

            The figure on the right, nearer the outer edge of the page, has been given gold leaf for their hair and eyes, and seems to have once had bright, burnished skin as well, though the pigment has now acquired a greenish cast. Their robe, adorned in patterns of gold leaf, seems to have once been white.

            Both figures are surrounded by thin lines that link their hair, eyes, faces, hands, and either clothing or limbs to small, dense blocks of text strewn thickly on the page. In the center, one of these blocks of text stands out from the rest, written not in black ink but red. The lines from it go to the nearer hands of both figures.

            “How to distinguish a light adept from a shadow adept in the wild,” Pitch says wryly. “The aspiring naturalist must take care, though, for while the light adept’s hands are harmless, the shadow adept’s are not.”

            Sandy laughs a little. “In the wild…” he says softly. “Well, of course all the light adepts would have been wild when Old Selenean was spoken. That was long before the Academy. Hmm. Wait—Pitch, I think you might be on to something. This page does at least _seem_ to be diagramming the basic characteristics of light and shadow adepts, and you know what that means? It means that when this book was written, these things were not necessarily common knowledge.”

            “Are you sure that’s not too much of a stretch?” Pitch asks, his tone making it clear that he hopes the answer will be _no_.

            “It’s the presence of the light adept that does it for me,” Sandy says, reaching his hand toward, but not touching, the drawing. “And the way that they’re both drawn equally. They share the same amount of detail.” He moves his hand over to the painted shadow adept and touches one fingertip to a section of deep, rich, blue on their robe. “Stoneblue’s always been worth its weight in gold. When this was made, both figures were meant to physically have the same value.”

            “It’s hard to imagine shadow adepts being so valued.”

            “Imagine it now,” Sandy says, removing his hand from the page and making note of their observations. “Though I wonder if maybe it wasn’t the other way around.”

 

            The next illumination they find shows a scene of a dozen figures holding hands around a basin of water.

            “Is this meant to be literal?” Pitch asks at once, taking in the alternating gold-leaf and black-ink hair of the figures. Sandy only looks at the image for several long moments.

            “Their features are mixed,” he says, finally. “Some of them are like the light and shadow adepts in the first illumination, but here…” he trails off. He’s never heard of anything like this before, never seen any images even close to this. It’s hard for him to even feel hopeful as he finally sees a representation of another being that looks like Pitch, gray skin and black hair but with gold in the eyes, for anger rises within him as fast as hope. Whether this picture is meant to represent reality or some kind of concept, it should have been known. This means something in the history of the light adepts, yet it was never even hinted at in all their days at the Academy. But this is what they needed and what he and Pitch still need—not legendary glassblowers. “I have no idea if it’s meant to be literal. We have never been taught, nor experienced, _anything_ that would indicate that anything about this picture is possible. Yet even metaphorically!”

            “How did we get here from there,” Pitch murmurs, and Sandy nods.

 

            Following close after this illumination is one that seems to be a map of the Serene and the surrounding terrain, though only a very small central area is marked with a few stylized buildings. Much more detail is given to the river and the streams that feed it—more stoneblue—and, scattered over the page, yet not interacting with the courses of any of the waters, circles showing various phases of the moon, picked out in gold.

            “Shall we guess that these are moonpools?” Sandy says softly.

            “We can’t assume that we can map this picture to the city as it stands now.” Pitch frowns. “Though they’ve drawn the rivers so carefully…”

            Sandy tears a thin strip of paper from his notebook and rests it in the crease. “We might want to find it again easily when we know more.”

            Pitch nods and turns the page.

            The pair of leaves that open to them form one large picture; the only text is crammed into the upper left-hand corner of the verso page.

            “This is what we did,” Sandy breathes, reaching out almost involuntarily to touch the parchment.

            “This is not what we did,” Pitch says, his voice tight, drawing his hand back towards himself to avoid Sandy’s.

            The scene painted on the pages before them depicts ten figures with mixed light adept and shadow adept characteristics standing on the rocky bank of a large pool surrounded by grass and trees. The water of the pool has been painted with stoneblue and decorated with spirals of gold leaf—amid the other, faded colors, it almost seems to glow. Under the water, at least as far as Sandy can guess, thanks to the stylization, a figure with only light adept features holds hands with a figure with only shadow adept features. On the upper right corner of the paired pages, a full golden moon shines down on them all.

            “Why do you say this is not what we did?” asks Sandy, after several long moments.

            “They have smiling witnesses,” Pitch whispers. “which we have never had. And,” he continues in a more businesslike tone, “we cannot be sure that this is a picture of a moonpool.”

            “Pitch, if this is not a moonpool I will _eat_ this book,” Sandy says, and Pitch frowns at him.

            “You could use a little Shining on it. A yes or no question couldn’t be that risky.”

            “Even handling this book only with our hands is risky for the information inside. And it wouldn’t be a simple yes or no question—not when I no longer feel sure what a light adept is; not when I think of how I have never known what a moonpool was or is.”

            Pitch nods slowly. “And we have not read the whole book yet. But, Sandy…you will take risks when you need to, yes?”

            Sandy looks up at him. “As soon as we know what to do, there is no force in this world that could stop me from doing it.”

            Pitch smiles and leans away because he’d rather lean towards. “Not even me?”

            “Not by force—at least, I don’t think so. If you had serious objections of course I would give them a fair hearing…”

            “That doesn’t make for a very good story,” Pitch says wryly.

            “Well, then leave that part out if necessary. I shan’t stop behaving like someone who respects and cares about you to make victory a closer call, or whatever the result of that pigheadedness would be.” He realizes his tone has become quite sharp, and shakes his head as he turns the page.

            Unlike other illuminations, which are followed by several pages consisting solely of text, the probable moonpool with the submerged adepts is followed by a page showing several small figures with features matching the submerged adepts in apparently unrelated scenes.

            “Sun and moon,” Sandy murmurs.

            “Are these sequential?” Pitch asks, leaning back towards the book to better see the images.

            “If so, I don’t think you can argue that the previous image was not what we did.”

            The figures appear in pairs, the second image of which always shows either the light adept or shadow adept whole and smiling. The first image in each pair, however, is, even in this simplified style, rather disturbingly gruesome. In one, the light adept has been disemboweled with a sword. In another, the shadow adept has been hanged. The light adept is covered in the bright rash of the red wasting. The shadow adept is emaciated. The light adept burns. The shadow adept drowns. The light adept is smothered. The shadow adept is poisoned. Thin lines connect each pair of images to a block of text on the facing page, the letters there larger than any they’ve seen yet in the book, the ink heavily applied, and with several words in red ink and larger letters among the rest.

            “The text seems agitated,” comments Pitch, though his deep frown belies the levity of his comment.

            “Well, the images certainly seem to be something to be agitated about.” Sandy turns the page, to find not a return to the smaller letter size of before, but a continuation of the large, angry-seeming letters with frequent red words. This goes on for several more pages, until, all at once, the next pair of pages open to a diptych devoid of text. Sandy gasps and Pitch goes utterly silent and still.

            On the left-hand page, the figure with light adept coloring lays their head on an execution block. Beside them, the figure with the shadow adept coloring stands, a raised sword in their hands. On the right-hand page, the head of the light adept lies fallen on the ground in a pool of blood, while the red end of their severed neck is shown bleeding onto the execution block. The shadow adept, though apparently unwounded, lies on the ground beside the head of the light adept. Their eyes are closed, as are the eyes of the light adept, while in all the previous images they had been open. The bloodied sword has fallen from their hands to the bottom of the page.

            “Turn the page, Sandy,” Pitch says, getting up and beginning to pace the room. “I can assure you I will remember that image with utmost clarity.”

            Only when he hears the faint crackle of turning parchment does Pitch return to his chair. He stiffens again when he sees that this next page begins with a large spatter of red ink and that the size of the words remains as large as before.

            “We need to talk about that image.” Sandy looks up at Pitch as he absently draws a spiral in his mostly-forgotten notebook. “I need to know what you think it means, and I need to tell you what I think it means.”

            “What it means is that I will not sleep soundly when next I go to rest,” Pitch says. “By all the waters of the earth and sky I wish I had not seen it.”

            Sandy slams his hand against the wood of the desk. “How can you say that? We came to the city to discover all we could, and now we have finally _found_ something! Something that answers questions we’ve had for centuries!”

            “No!” Pitch stands, unable to resist pacing once more, “no, it tells us only how to die!”

            “It—very well, then! It shows us how to die! If the immortal light adept can only die by the hand of the immortal shadow adept—Pitch,” he says, his voice softening, “I don’t fear that image.”

            “I do,” Pitch says, his voice sounding choked. “I do, because we cannot read _why_ such a situation came to pass. I do, because if this image were to be widely known, I would be more feared and hated than ever before. I do, because I dread the things they would do to protect you if I remained free.”

            “Yet within your undefined ‘they’ are surely the only ones living who have even had the chance to know about this book and its images. And still it remained secret until now.”

            Pitch folds himself into the pale green armchair farthest from the desk. “Perhaps they couldn’t read the text and that’s why they didn’t use it?”

            Sandy raises his eyebrows.

            “All right, that wouldn’t have stopped them from using the picture as propaganda. Do _you_ have any idea why they wouldn’t have taken advantage of it?”

            Sandy nods and turns the pages so that they show the submerged light and shadow adepts. “I think whoever decided to hide this book did so because it shows how light and shadow adepts could become immortal.”

            Pitch frowns. “Go on.”

            Lightly touching the image of the submerged shadow adept, Sandy continues. “I think…this image is almost certainly of a moonpool. They couldn’t always have existed surrounded by bricks and mosaics. And then, what else does the image show? The adepts under water, and the full moon shining down on the pool. Then the next page shows both adepts as immortals.” He smiles briefly, without warmth, removes his hand from the image, and leaves the book as it is, going over to sit in the chair next to Pitch’s. “The conditions are so simple. It would be easy to fulfill them by accident.”

            “Accident,” Pitch repeats, and his voice sounds as weary as five hundred years can make it. He doesn’t speak for several long moments after that, nor does he get up to pace. All he does is pull the light coat he’s wearing closer around himself. “But there was no moonlight upon the pool. And it wasn’t a full moon that night anyway.”

            “The light we shared before we swam was full moon light,” Sandy says.

            “Of course.” Pitch clasps his hands together. “Of course it was. So we were never chosen at all. We were just…unlucky.”

            Sandy pulls on a lock of his hair. “Do you really mean that?”

            Pitch turns to him and meets his bright gold eyes, forever more familiar to him than his own. He folds his arms and leans slightly out of his chair towards Sandy’s. “I don’t know. Maybe not totally. But yes, in some things. Obviously the adepts in the book weren’t present for the Dimming. We’re unlucky to have lived through that, and in these times.”

            “Unlucky,” Sandy muses. “That’s not a common word in Shining. Neither is accident.” He drums his fingers on the arms of the chair a few times before pushing himself up to go light the fire. He knows Pitch isn’t gripping his coat around him because of the day rapidly cooling with the sunset, and that a wood fire, no matter how cheerful, isn’t the warmth he needs, but he has to offer something.

            “I remember them being easy to learn because they were loans from Selenean,” Pitch says. “What are you saying?”

            “When we were young we said in Shining that we’d love each other forever. And the word for forever we used wasn’t the kind that’s associated with the Long Song. But there wasn’t any resistance. And then, later, it’s us who fulfilled the conditions for immortality at the moonpool—the moonpool that, as it was, could only be found by a shadow adept—or a near-shadow-adept—and opened by a light adept. Now…I’m not sure what I’m saying. Maybe it’s just because we’re us, but it seems to me that a great many of the problems facing us, when they have clear solutions, will need to be solved by _both_ of us, working together.”

            “If there are solutions,” Pitch says. “If it isn’t time for light and shadow magics to be replaced by something else.”

            “Did Jack seem that new to you?”

            “Jack is one boy, who, if he is lucky, will in time become a man, who in time will grow old and die. Unless more like him are found soon…suffice it to say it wasn’t Jack I was thinking of. I was thinking of North.”

            “North is not trying to replace magic…” Sandy says slowly, looking into the flames of the hearth, the reddest red there not quite as vivid as the paint on North’s automated carriage.

            “Because he is not familiar with a world in which it’s not already gone.” Pitch stands and takes a place at the other side of the fireplace, watching Sandy. “Gone from the Lunar Kingdom.”

            “There’s no need to look so challenging.” Sandy sighs. “I know it’s gone. I know now that my dreams were only treating the symptom, not the cause.”

            “Well.” Pitch looks down at his feet. “I don’t want it to be gone. But that possibility is one of the reasons why we’re in the city.”

            Sandy nods. “And yet we tasted moonpool water only two days ago.” He looks up into Pitch’s face, to the gold-gray eyes that he had always assumed were a sign of an aberration of world-shaking proportions. But what if they were a sign of righting the world? The illuminations of the book had shown even more drastic variations. “Though the book we read today did not answer all of our questions that we had when we started, and added yet more, it convinced me more than ever that it is the past that we should concern ourselves with illuminating before we speculate on the future.”

            “True,” Pitch says. “After all, when you reminded me of how our words in Shining were fulfilled…I would almost think that you were saying that Light had a hand in Shadow’s choosing me.”

            “Is that stranger than magic leaving the land?”

            “Stranger? I don’t know. Far more worrisome? Yes—I’d prefer to have only one cosmic force meddling in my life at a time.”

            Sandy smiles. “Naturally. When Light and Shadow collaborate, there’s no telling what could happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DO NOT stick your fingers all over 1500-year-old illuminations when you have the chance to encounter them in real life. If you notice what illuminations Sandy touches, though, I think he can be forgiven.


	15. Zalla's Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy and Pitch continue their investigation as they read a book that at first only Pitch can see. More truths come out, particularly regarding kings.

 

            What happens immediately, however, is nothing very grand. Sandy insists that they take one of the sturdy, blank, record books and write down what they’ve learned so far, and how it relates to their own experiences and memories.

            “I’ll write on all the left-hand pages in Shining, and you can write on all the right-hand pages in Erebusian,” Sandy says, gathering pens and drying sand from a desk drawer. “The important thing is that it’s done so there’s less chance of the information getting lost. The more it’s out of just those fragile pages and our heads, the better.”

            Pitch remains silent as Sandy opens the book and inscribes the first word with a heavy, thick black line: _We_. Before he can begin the next word, though, he speaks. “Shouldn’t you write this in Selenean?”

            “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Sandy says. “I want to use a lot of concepts that are better left untranslated, at least for the precise meaning, and think of the book we just looked at. Completely unintelligible and—”

            “Sandy. Who is going to read this?”

            Sandy’s fingers tighten around the pen. The silence that follows fills the room, impossible to breathe as water, and even the cheerful roar and crackle of the fire seems muffled. When Sandy finally turns toward him, Pitch has to force himself not to back away. The shifting glimmer in Sandy’s eyes isn’t the reflection of the firelight—isn’t the _reflection_ of anything. “ _Someone will read this. Someone who is neither Sandren nor Pitch Black. They will read, and understand. Do you know why I say this? Because all will be well someday._ ” Pitch swallows and nods slightly, unsure of whether he should break a silence that has only been broken by Shining thus far.

            “If you think this endeavor inevitably fruitless,” Sandy says softly, switching to Selenean, though the light does not leave his eyes, “I must…ask you to leave my presence.”

            “I do not wish to argue with Shining,” Pitch says. “But I also do not wish to argue with the evidence of my life. And more than either of these, I do not wish to argue with you.” The chance of either of them doing something regrettable while angry is all too high. What they’d been taught would say that light would drive away shadow, and that shadow would dampen light, but when Sandy speaks Shining like this, when Light itself seems to suffuse him, it’s not the flicker remaining in Pitch that answers. When Sandy shines, Pitch feels the shadows wake under his skin, only barely quiescent. For a long time, Pitch had thought this was an urge to attack, quelled only by his love for Sandy. Lately, though, he’s wondered if this love wasn’t also riling up the shadows.

            For the impulse isn’t _violent_ , not exactly. It’s not a desire to snuff out Sandy’s light, but to end the separation between them, as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. But it is dangerous, and makes him feel more like Shadow than Pitch. He doesn’t enjoy the feeling.

            And so, though lingering around Sandy in his incandescent determination is what he most wants to do, Pitch nods deeply to Sandy and leaves the study, closing the door behind him. As he walks out, he feels the glow of Sandy’s eyes on his back the entire time.

            He paces upstairs and downstairs, finally stopping in front of the cupboard full of light in the kitchen. He stares at the bottles for too long, daring himself to pour a glass. When he finally manages to leave, he only comes to another stop outside Sandy’s bedroom, where he also stands too long, considering wrapping himself up in Sandy’s blankets even more seriously than he considered drinking the light. When he tears himself away from that threshold, he lets himself be halted by the more neutral door that opens onto the light-gathering circle behind the house. The disrepair appalls him, even if (or especially if) Sandy is the only one he knows will ever use it.

 

            When Sandy wakes at dawn, he finds himself slumped uncomfortably in one of the study’s armchairs. He stands up, massaging his stiff neck with one hand and looking around for something that would explain why he’s here instead of his bedroom. The open record book, many pages filled with his handwriting, answers most of his questions, the sight of it bringing back memories of the previous evening. Strangely, though, the memories aren’t as clear as they should be. Sandy flips through the pages of the record book, and while the ideas are distinct in his memory, the words remain oddly unfamiliar, as if he was looking at a perfect replica of his style.

            Had he been so sleepy? His writing stops mid-sentence, and Sandy assumes that he intended to take a brief nap and then continue writing, when he had fallen asleep for the night. The exact scenario had happened many times before, yet it seems unusual that this should have occurred with Pitch around—but Pitch was not around, was he? He had left shortly after Sandy had spoken in Shining.

            Sandy closes the record book firmly. Why had Pitch had to bring up the prospect of failure at a moment of progress, or at all, now that they—well, Sandy at least—were becoming ever more embroiled within the public problems of a kingdom that, so far, seemed to need solutions directly related to what they were trying to do? There was no responsible way to go back to the island now, so why speak of the path leading away from it as a dead end? And why—Sandy frowns and shakes his head. He can only blame himself for his present disorientation. He could have been optimistic without calling on Shining and Light to guide his words. Even though the news was good, it didn’t mean the Speaking had been worth it.

            He rests his face in his hands for a moment and takes a deep breath. What’s past is past. All he needs to do is remember this in the future. Remember…that every time he Speaks, letting his mouth and mind be flooded with all the knowledge of Light, it takes longer and longer for him to return to what he thinks of as himself. Hours, this time. At the Luminous Academy this had never been mentioned, but not even the oldest of the light adepts he had known then had Spoken as much as he had after centuries of life.

            Resolved to stick to ordinary Shining for the near future, Sandy leaves the study to search for Pitch. He expects him to be asleep at this time of day, but he’d like to know where he is in the house.

            To his surprise, he finds Pitch in the kitchen, in an apron, rolling out dough. His expression of concentration is familiar to Sandy, yet he’s never seen it dusted with flour before today.

            Pitch pulls the dough out of the sunlight just beginning to shine onto the preparation table and tests the width. Satisfied, he re-rolls his sleeves and starts cutting the dough into strips.

            “Good morning,” Sandy says, startling Pitch, who jumps, mindful of his bare forearms, away from the sunlight.

            “Hopefully better than last night,” Pitch says, returning his attention to the dough. “I’m sorry, Sandy, I’m so used to contradicting you and usually it doesn’t mean so much…this situation is very strange for me and I think I’m going to be on the brink of handling it badly for as long as it takes to resolve.”

            “Is baking part of handling it badly?” Sandy asks as he moves around the table to be nearer Pitch.

            “Baking is a defense against doing so,” Pitch mutters. He pulls a pie dish, already heaping full of apple pie filling, towards him, and arranges the strips of dough on top of it in a lattice. “I don’t know if this will be good,” he admits. “I don’t actually bake very often because I rarely have access to large ovens. I probably should have just gone to that bakery I bought the apple turnovers at when we first arrived here, but I wanted this all to be my doing…that is…this is for you, Sandy,” he says quickly, pressing the edges of the lattice pieces to the bottom crust with a pastry stamp that leaves the imprint of a stylized moon—one of the many curious kitchen oddments he had found over the course of the night. “Do you,” he begins, taking one long step back when he sees how near Sandy has approached, “understand?”

            “I think so,” Sandy replies, moving away from the table and Pitch without comment. “But I can’t help but wonder, when we don’t have any leads yet, if there isn’t danger in…” he trails off, looking out the glass door that leads from the kitchen to the light-gathering courtyard. Yesterday, the paving stones had been bordered by grass and weeds forcing their way through the cracks, several stones had been jostled out of place, and the small garden plots surrounding it had been overgrown and choked with detritus from seasons past. This morning, the grass and weeds are gone from between the stones, the loosened ones have been set back in position, and while it is clear no expert attended to the garden plots, everything dead has been cleared away and what’s alive has been pruned so that it’s once more within the decorative borders, now visible again. The central stones also gleam, as if they’ve been washed.

            Sandy sighs. “Pitch, don’t you think…don’t you think doing these things only makes everything more difficult?”

            “It seemed to help last night,” Pitch answers as he moves the pie to the oven. “And if you’re concerned about making things worse, why are you bringing up the subject?”

            Sandy looks at Pitch, in the apron and rolled-up sleeves, dusted with flour, standing, hands on hips and slightly vexed, in the kitchen of the house that has been his and only his for so long, as morning sunlight shines through the windows. He smiles sadly. “Because I myself do not have perfect self-restraint either. Shall we not hide?” He returns to the table and leans on it, tracing a few words in Shining in the loose flour and immediately erasing them. “I think you associate this house with me, at least a little. I know you’re making that pie because you want to do something that will bring me physical pleasure. And I know that whatever you were thinking of when you cleared the courtyard, the symbolic weight of your actions rests on the side of Light.” His voice goes quiet. “And the last thing I know is that right now you look like a fantasy that I’ve worked very hard to convince myself could never become reality.”

            “Only look,” Pitch says. He and Sandy pause in a silent tableau for long moments. “You’re wrong about the house, though,” he says, inching back from the spreading sunlight. “I associate the whole city with you.”

            “A difference in degree, not in kind,” Sandy says. “And not a comforting one. So where does all this leave us?”

            “We need to find out whether the illuminations in that book were meant to be taken literally or not.” Pitch takes off the apron and hangs it on a hook. “The mixed features, everyone holding hands. Even if only that, I swear…”

            “Even if only that.” Sandy gives Pitch a brief, small smile. “We’re working towards more than that and you know it.”

            “But it would give me all the strength I ever needed to continue into eternity.”

            “You already have that, Pitch. We both do. But…it does seem right that on that journey we should each have a companion as close as our own skin.”

            “Do not speak to me of skin,” whispers Pitch.

            Sandy nods solemnly. “As you wish. Will you come with me to the study?”

 

            “I’d like you to select what we’re going to read next,” Sandy says. Every volume they took from the Dream Cloisters is arrayed around the room in a manner that allows the spines to be easily read.

            “Do you want me to look for the one holding the most secrets?” Pitch asks.

            “I’m not sure,” Sandy admits, touching each book’s spine one at a time. “I think a lot of the things we’re looking for weren’t deliberately kept secret, just forgotten. Did the manuscript from last night feel like secrets?”

            Pitch shakes his head, watching Sandy walk his fingers over the books. “Not more so than the other books. That they were hidden in that room overwhelms the subtleties of their own secrets.” Sandy’s fingers rest on one book, then skip over one with a black leather cover before pausing on the next one. “You’re not checking for anything as you touch them?”

            “I’m just trying to feel what I can feel…”

            “Then why’d you skip one?”

            “I didn’t?” Sandy turns to him, puzzled.

            “Yes, you did. Just now. That one in black between the tan one stamped with moon symbols and the dark blue one.”

            Sandy turns to face the books again. “What are you talking about? There’s no book between those two.” He places his hand on the tops of the other books. “You _are_ talking about these two?”

            Pitch nods. “Yes. And there is a book between them, and I think that _that_ is just the book we need to read next.”

 

            Even when Pitch holds the book, Sandy has trouble seeing it. To be visible, it demands his full attention, and every time he loses sight of it, Pitch has to show him it again. “You’d better be the one to handle it,” he says. “I’d drop it as soon as I looked away from it. And I keep forgetting that it’s there! It’s…unsettling. Moreso than similar things you’ve done.”

            “It is shadow magic.” Pitch lightly touches the faded, cracked, unadorned leather of the book’s cover. “Very strong shadow magic. Like the water workings, though, it’s strange that it should still be so strong so long after the death of the adept who did the work…I don’t know if I could wield such power, and I don’t think you could do so easily. And all this centered in one book…”

            When Pitch opens the volume, the text appears in darkest black against the pages, and his jaw drops. “This was written in shadow instead of ink. I’ve never seen that done before. Sandy, can you…is it easier to pay attention to it now?”

            “Written in shadow…but it’s not in Erebusian.” Sandy stares at the text. “It’s in that strange combination of Erebusian and Shining we found on the wall of the moonpool. I’ve never seen anything else written like that.”

            “We may need to read much of it aloud to decipher it,” Pitch says, and Sandy nods.

            “No matter. No one’s around to listen, and if they were…well, it’s likely the truth, isn’t it? Half-Shining…and no one hides lies.”

            “Did I teach you that maxim?” Pitch asks. Sandy shakes his head. Pitch hums. “Well then. We ought to start. _Zalla wrote this, may she_ ,” he reads aloud. “The dedication asking for the author’s immortality has been scratched out.”

            “And the paper’s torn through there,” Sandy says. “What do you think we’re going to find in here?”

 

            _I am writing a book no one will read, and when it is finished I shall die by the actions of my own hands. This will not be a suicide. This will be an execution, one that will be all-too-well deserved. Can I…can I? If I do not it will all be for naught, but if I do! Oh, Moon. At least I will not have to live with my actions for more than an instant. No, I can’t, I can’t! This is…this is…HOW DARE THEY? HOW DARES HE? THIS MANNIUS, THIS LIAR?_

_I am going to bear the brunt of his VILE BETRAYAL and yet I shall be remembered for perpetrating a worse one if I am remembered at all, which, for the sake of all my sisters and brothers, I must hope I am NOT._

_Hope? This is not hope. I know I have the skill, it is a simple thing of words and water OH STARS HELP ME NOT WATER and my own tongue my own body my ~~blood~~ feels like ice in my veins to think of this, my limbs shake and my stomach turns, I choke on bile _

_when I die I will be still and silent no long song no endless dance and I will be forgotten utterly. this oblivion is deserved and desired and therefore I know the thing I am to do will succeed_

_If I was not in this cell and still planned to do this thing I would not be surprised if the land itself would refuse to let me walk upon it, if the water of the Serene would refuse to quench my thirst._

_To save half my brothers and sisters and to allow the rest at least to survive, I am going to do the most terrible thing that this land has ever seen. The worst perversion of the dearest hope I ever felt for him._

_AND THIS IS THE FAULT OF MANNIUS THE LIAR_

_I KILLED FOR YOU, MANNIUS_

_I CANNOT UNDO WHAT I DID AND YET YOU THREW AWAY YOUR PROMISE_

_AND YOU LIE EVEN NOW_

_when I write that you lie in this book it means that everyone will forget but this shall only make the book more pleasing to you will it not? no one ever discovering your crimes_

_If this does not bring peace I swear I shall claw my way from out my grave and vomit upon you what you made me drink so you may be marked forever._

_I am loyal to the magic of this land over all else and you are going to make me become an abomination to it._

_Where should I begin, then Mannius? How much do you want them to forget? Do you want everyone to think the world began with your birth? What a mess that would be, Mannius. I think the old folk would find something very strange indeed about that. Maybe so strange that you’d have to burn this book. And then everyone would know and…the book would not be the only thing that burned. You petty tyrant, you disgusting, grasping, FILTH. I will write, and I will kill, and I will die, then. But I tell you Light is unrelenting and Shadow is patient and you will never stop the Moon shining down upon this land._

_I will write what you want and you will feel you have triumphed. But your victory will fail. All your dams and sluices will not hold back or calm the flood of the Serene when the time comes._

_(Oh my love that you were here and could tell me if I spoke the truth!)_

_And so now I must begin. The start is like a starstory. And whether true or not, to write it out of memory…I cover myself in corruption._

_The magic of the land governed by the Lunar Kingdom is different from the magics of other lands for it arose twice. The glassblowers saw that they could shape light and the scribes saw they could shape shadows, and the land and the Moon granted them these powers when they drew water to cool their glass-shaping tools and to liquefy their ink from certain springs. And from these springs the crafters also drank and from their lips a new tongue fell and thus their magic was released from glass and ink._

_Now in those days the ones who had been glassblowers and the ones who had been scribes were not slow to realize that their magics, no matter how different they appeared to the eyes of those who had not such power, stemmed from the same source: the chosen springs of the Moon._

_And all who drank of the water had the power of the land and the Moon in them, and they grew healthy and strong, flourishing both in the light of the day and the dark of the night._

_But just as the Moon’s power was granted differently to the wise scribes and glassblowers, so too was it granted differently among the people of the land. Most of the people of the land, when they drank of the water, gained only peaceful hearts, and, in time, fine and lively children to follow them in the ordinary business of life. But to a few, as the first glassblowers and scribes, were granted the powers of shadows and light, and these no children followed, for in this way was the magic of the Moon like all magic in the world._

_The Moon marked these few like itself: some were like the full moon when it is near the earth, bright gold their skin, bright gold their hair, bright gold their eyes; some were like the new moon, their hair and eyes a starless dark and their skin the gray pale of the new moon’s resting, hidden face. Still others were like the waxing or the waning moon, and their features were a mix of bright and dark._

_Those who were light had the power of light, and those who were dark had the power of darkness and shadow. And this is to say that those with the power of light had the power to reveal in all ways, and those who had the power of shadow had the power to conceal in all ways. The language they all learned at the springs helped them describe such power, and_

_Stars, what am I even writing? Half of this I know I was told as a little child, a quarter I only believe I was told as a child, and a quarter I am inventing! There are no records of this time that I have ever seen. The scribes did not write on paper or parchment then, the people were not settled. The records they wrote were tattoos. If they are still preserved, perhaps more could be known…and yet it sickens me to think of this land becoming so callous that it would disturb the darkness of the grave._

_Mannius, you excrement, you deserve no bedtime story. You deserve no singing cadence, no swaying hands and dancing fingers._

_Here are the things you want everyone to forget:_

_1\. Certain springs, perhaps three dozen in all, in the vicinity of the settlement of the City of the Moon, flow with water that is different from the rest of the water in the kingdom. For one thing, it glows in the darkness, just enough to be seen. These springs are the source of the magic in this land, the magic of the Moon, which is the magics of Light and Shadow._

_Oh, isn’t that enough? When that is forgotten, everything else you want will follow. I do not_

_So it is not enough. I suppose I knew this. But the more I delay the more dawns he will greet and_

_oh Moon_

_Here is the history that no one will ever know again. And why. Mannius, you cannot care if I write that too, can you? What I write here is hidden forever._

_The magic that flows from the Springs of the Moon in their water is both light and shadow, and those who drink may be chosen by Light or Shadow, depending on their hearts. Long ago most who were chosen had a mix of these magics in them._

_“Long ago”. Pah. I fall into legend again. But why would there be records of such a thing that is known as well as the sun rising in the east, as the Serene flooding in the spring, as mortality?_

_Ah, because that was the problem. Here is some style for you Mannius. I suppose I cannot escape it, tale spinner as I am in longing of the dream spinning closed to me._

_The magic of this land involves a deep duality, a duality more fundamental than that in any other type of magic I have ever heard of—A DUALITY YOU EXPLOIT, MANNIUS, YOU TRASH. Because of this duality, those who were chosen by Light and Shadow found themselves, as their understanding of the magic grew deeper, unable to study both in a single lifetime. They tried to remedy this, asking Light and Shadow to choose children rather than adults, but still a human lifetime was not enough. Even those chosen as children became adepts of Light or of Shadow, but never of both. And though they became very powerful as light adepts or shadow adepts, they knew they were incomplete._

_And so—and again this is a thing I am not sure really happened, unless there were many fewer adepts in those days than there are now, though if there were so few of us then why so much fear? WE DO NOT WANT WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO STOP US FROM TAKING. And so those who worked both light and shadow, and the adepts of light and the adepts of shadow met in a great council under the full Moon by the Springs of the Moon, where they sang and danced the songs of their origin. They told Light and Shadow and the Moon their troubles, and they slept under its light. And all of them dreamed the same dream, and in that dream was a great gift that was theirs to take._

_And this was the gift: For every person who devoted themselves to Light, Shadow would choose one to be their opposite. And for every person who devoted themselves to Shadow, Light would choose one to be their opposite. And these pairs, incomplete as individuals but perfect as partners in knowledge, when they immersed themselves in a Spring of the Moon under the full Moon’s light and drank of the water, would become undying, and so have a chance to understand the end of Light and Shadow._

_But humans are accustomed to being mortal, and Light and Shadow, as the keepers of the Long Song and Endless Dance, knew this. And so if the gift became too heavy for the pair, it was also given to them that the shadow adept, retaining the power of violence in its incomprehensibility, could release the light adept from life. And upon doing this deed, Light, in a final revelation of their fundamental link, would cause the shadow adept to fall as well._

_I am weak to use such euphemisms am I not? In the days hence_

            “Pitch,” Sandy says, touching a few small water stains on the page.

            Pitch stands up abruptly, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape on the study floor. “I’m going to go check on the pie.”

 

            “We don’t have to read all of it today,” Sandy says when Pitch returns. “I think we can both guess…”

            “We can guess what, but not why.” Pitch keeps his shoulders hunched forward towards the book, but his face turned slightly away. “It’s probably something we need to know.” He closes his eyes. “Even if we do not keep reading, we will keep thinking about the book all day. It would be better to do that with more information rather than less.”

            “If you’re sure,” Sandy says. “It’s not as if we don’t have enough to discuss already, with the naming of our source, the description of a past unity between light and shadow adepts.”

            “And yet you’re not exactly reeling and crying out in shock.”

            “No. I’m not.” Sandy folds his hands in his lap and looks down at them. “Perhaps I should be. Perhaps I will be, later, when I’ve had time to take this all in. But the history that Zalla’s written so far…it’s not something I don’t want to be true. If I didn’t have you, maybe it would be. Or, no.” He looks up at Pitch. “This _feels_ true. And like all truth it brings joy, if not happiness, to my light adept heart. And it makes me think that perhaps…perhaps Light would not abandon me with the slightest touch of Shadow.”

            “Please do not become reckless, Sandy,” Pitch whispers. “I already am, and the risk is too great.”

            “I will still be served by long habit,” Sandy replies, covering his hands with his sleeves. “But this does make it clear that we still have many unanswered questions.”

            “Let us read as long as we can, then,” Pitch says.

 

_I am weary. Even the narrow beam of sunlight that shines into my cell burns my skin. I do not want to write. What I write calls me to be angry and I am too tired for rage. Everything is wrong, wrong long ago, and I can do nothing to fix it. Both action and inaction on my part will make things worse._

_My sleep was dreamless. They won’t tell me where Nur is. But don’t they have to keep him happy so he doesn’t suspect_

_They say they’ll bring me food again when I write more. Here I am, writing more._

_They didn’t believe that I was writing anything important. I still don’t know where Nur is. I do not pretend to be strong about this anymore. I have cried and screamed for Nur, torn my hair_

_why do they not let us share a cell? have at least a few days together?_

_Mannius could choose another light adept to take his stained gift_

_oh_

_could he intend_

_to make me do this thing in public_

_to seal my villainy and shame forever_

_I cannot be that villain not even if I try. Even doing what I must—_

_The moon waxes just beyond the half tonight. The guards say that if I don’t write they’ll find another shadow adept for this. I cannot let this task fall to another. I could never be so cruel._

_They won’t let me linger past another full Moon._

_Here is more history that no one will know. For many years the immortal pairs of light and shadow adepts lived peacefully among the other adepts and in the Lunar Kingdom. About two hundred years ago, though, the first census was taken in the Lunar Kingdom. Not suspecting anything, the light adepts and shadow adepts were open about their numbers, their paired immortality, and how they obtained it._

_A delegation of Lords responsible for interpreting the census interpreted this as only their petty minds could, and saw in the great gift of the Moon not a means of searching for completeness, but as a means of gathering great power which could only mean one thing: the adepts meant to overthrow the government and seize control._

_Maybe they should have. At this point I am not really sure why that would have been a bad thing, save that adepts are human and would make human errors but this is a problem that will never be solved. Titles do not prevent adepts from using their magic as they see fit already, and if they feared an immortal ruler, they must have conveniently forgotten that such immortals would be paired, checked by other immortals, and, oh yes, MOST LIKELY NOT OF A STATE OF MIND TO BE CONCERNED WITH POLITICAL GAMES. And the oldest immortal pair I ever heard of only lived to be 257 and they had been living in two cottages on a fine green hill since they were 104. I heard tell Lumina kissed the golden knife before pressing it into Melanthe’s hands. Oh Nur I am sure we would have gotten even older_

_The Lords interpreted the census in their banal and shortsighted way and commissioned the Codex of the Adepts to be written. It purported to be a factual account of the adepts in the Lunar Kingdom and their way of life, but when it described their acceptance of the Moon’s gift, it was filled with nothing but hateful slander against the adepts, charging them with an insatiable lust for life and power. And though the adepts had never done anything against the king—maybe that was it, though—can paper power stand to be ignored?—the king believed the account in the Codex and sought the advice of the Lords. The Lords told him that the Springs of the Moon were the source of the danger_

_DAMN THEM DAMN THEM ALL TO SILENCE AND STILLNESS_

_That’s why I’m not recording their names, Mannius. I don’t want them to be recorded in any way, not even in a record of forgetfulness, those craven cowards, those spewers of slime._

_In the years after receiving the Moon’s gift, first of power and then of paired immortality, the adepts had worked to make the Springs of the Moon ever more beautiful. They built wide pools of shining tiles to hold the water before it was channeled away to the Serene, and the surrounded the pools with beautiful mosaic ledges and walls._

_You love them better under sunlight, Nur, the dancing figures shining gold and violet and the inlaid text practically singing itself, while I love them better under starlight, despite that more boots obscure the patterns at night. And now we will finally get to see them up close under moonlight, as intended, Nur. I hope they will be beautiful enough to comfort you when_

_Why could I not see that the Codex was the problem? Why did I not use my power to hide it? Change would have been slow, but for the better! And if I and Nur would live a hundred times a thousand more days as old woman and old man_

_On Longnight after the writing of the Codex, the King sent guards out in the bitter cold to take up posts surrounding the Springs of the Moon, our Moonpools. And so they have remained ever since, allowing us to gather water but never to bathe in it. For the safety of the kingdom, they say. They say they are protecting the water, protecting the source of our magic, and I know many adepts who believe them, now. Light adepts and shadow adepts find it more difficult each year to understand each other’s speech. Tales of immortality seem only tales. To have a light adept and shadow adept care for each other enough to live immortally with them—even more of a tale. After all, there are no pairs living now and in the minds of the old the real memories are replaced by stories. Just as so many memories will be replaced by this story of mine._

_Oh Nur why must we have been special why must we have fallen in love why must we have been different why even now can I not regret your slender gold arms around me, your shining eyes upon me, ~~your tongue tasting shadow as eagerly as mine tasted your noon light~~_

_But I have seen the Codex and I have looked into the eyes of men who know the guards truly protect only them and their brittle thrones. And when did I see that Codex, Mannius? Did the Star-Eater and Cave-Breaker himself hand it to me? Would that he had! The bargain would have been conducted fairly then, at least!_

_In L.Y. 585 I was twenty-one, freshly named an adept. I was praised as the darkest shadow of my age, and joyfully bound to Nur, lauded as the brightest light of his. The kingdom was at peace, and in our ignorance, we felt as though the world was laid out in our favor, the few imperfections we saw, like the growing rift between light and shadow adepts, mere puzzles to amuse us as we grew ever more in love and pushed the boundaries of our powers ever further. There would be no problems we could not solve. I…NO. I WILL NOT WRITE THAT TIME HERE. Not for your blinkered eyes, and not to be forgotten. Our names will be gone when I am done writing, the end of our story, awful as it is, will be gone, the possibility of our love may be gone, but for my sake and Nur’s, I will not write of our happy times here. Though the rest be gone, perhaps there are those out in the world even now who saw us when the world was good to us, and seeing us in the world made them glad, made them love the others in their lives a little better. If there is even a chance that I have unwittingly done some good…and do not say I am doing good now, Mannius. I am not. I am giving you the sword upon which you and this whole kingdom will fall, though you do not know it yet._

_In 585 King Sable, thirty years old, took ill with a fever. It weakened him greatly, and there was much talk in the kingdom of how he should get an heir, if a suitable queen or, more securely, a bastard could be found, of scholars being hired at great sums of money to produce the most accurate family trees to find his nearest relative. At the time I did not know why there was such a furor regarding the heir to the throne. Though I did not know much history, I knew that King Sable’s grandfather had been selected as heir by the childless king who ruled before him with no regard to their lack of familial relation._

_And then, I met you, Mannius. You appeared so ordinary. Noble, yes, but it was not strange for the nobility to ask light or shadow adepts for magical aid. Even when you asked for me by name I did not feel any suspicion. My reputation was spreading, I thought. Why would my aid not be sought?_

_I was such a fool. The air around you was redolent with secrets and yet I believed you when you told me they were private matters that did not concern our business together. You told me you were concerned about the king’s lack of an heir, but even more concerned regarding something you had found in the archives of the palace. It was too fragile to be moved, you said. I must come with you. Would that I had brought Nur with me! He would have seen through your secrets at once. He would have seen the right course of action to follow, one that would not have led us here._

_I didn’t tell him anything. Not then, and of course not after. It is the nature of a shadow adept to be reticent, and you knew that well, didn’t you Mannius? You could have asked a light adept for help, but that would only have bettered the kingdom, not you._

_You showed me the Codex. You told me how King Sable was following its recommendations by posting guards around the pools, that the paired immortals were truly real, that the system as it stood was unjustly restricting light and shadow adepts, because of unfounded fears. You told me you had seen how light adepts and shadow adepts had been starting to segregate themselves from each other, and how you knew this was wrong—how you knew that paired immortals could heal this breach._

_What you told me was true enough. I suppose that was why it was so easy to believe the lies that followed._

_Remembering the hope I had then makes me feel ill. I know you don’t care, Mannius. If you cared, I wouldn’t be writing this now._

_So. You told me that there were two powerful factions in the palace, both putting forth a credible heir. Both heirs, you said were equally distantly related to Sable. And you were one of those heirs. Oh, you filth. I am sure now that there were far more suitable successors to the king. People he knew, people he trusted. But you. You had always known your relation to the king. But how could you, with your small, greedy heart and mediocre mind, ever make this relation worth anything? Only by spreading the idea that blood was the most important thing, that chances of fathers and mothers were to be relied upon more than demonstrated merit._

_I suppose you have not been entirely wrong about blood._

 

            This sentence, in particular, looks to have been written with a shaking hand.

 

            _I still don’t know why you want to be king. You aren’t concerned with bettering the kingdom, that’s clear enough. You have fine clothes already, why do you want the finest? You have servants enough. You know that the king works, don’t you? In that case perhaps it will be better to have you on the throne than not, if you must live. Best if you had been a streetcleaner, though, for they are also kept busy and cannot cause such chaos as you have._

_Best if I had been a streetcleaner. I ought to devote some time to cursing myself, shouldn’t I? For in callous desperation I played a most prodigious part in this bloody and sordid history._

_You told me that the king was dedicated to preventing any adepts from becoming immortal ever again. You told me that you had spoken with a light adept and that she had seen a great breach approaching—and perhaps you did, such prophecy would have been correct—and that if the Moonpools were not opened soon, the breach might become so deep, so ingrained, that those who stood on either side would forget that it should not be there. You told me the only way to avoid this terrible thing would be to place a new king on the throne. You told me that if you were king, you would open the Moonpools and leave them to the governance of the adepts._

_I believed you. There is your skill, Mannius. And when you lamented how the king’s unpredictable health made it uncertain whether your faction would be in power when he passed, I offered to take the uncertainty away._

_Looking back now it is difficult for me to articulate what I was feeling or thinking then. I know, Mannius, this is more matter you don’t care about. But I have no other place and no other time to write this, so here it is. The fact first, so you can see it. Skip the rest, I don’t care._

_I killed King Sable. I cannot blame you for this, you had no hold over me at that time. In a way, I suppose I had some hold over you. If I had told anyone of the things you had said to me and shown to me, your plans would have collapsed. Can I blame my capability as a shadow adept? In a way, I suppose this would make sense. I never even walked within twenty feet of Sable. I did not have to see his face as he died. Can I blame the fact that I am an adept? No, of course not. The violence I proved myself capable of has nothing to do with my magic. The boundless arrogance I possessed might have been mine even had I not been chosen by the Moon’s Shadow. And yet. And yet despite the soldiers around the Moonpools that I and all the other adepts saw as we gathered water the king had always felt so distant from my daily life. Even when I started talking to you, Mannius, who saw him frequently, he and his power became no more real to me. I suppose you intended this. You were in no way displeased by my solution, when I told you of it, and your horrified words didn’t match the sick smile that threatened to overtake your lips._

_I was, and am, a shadow adept. I can see clearly in the darkness even as I baffle all others’ eyes. I could hide a thought from the mind that originated it; I could conceal a city from all its inhabitants. I can move unseen, and I move where there are secrets, I move where there are mysteries. I know what is in the dark, for I am with it too. I am the one who will not reveal its presence, for I am also the one who knows that not all can be known, not all should be known, and not all should be revealed. I am a keeper of the deep forest and the deeper sea, of unspoken places where words and sight fail and feeling is all that remains._

_Or at least this is what I was taught to be. In truest, simplest terms, though, I have power to do what non-adepts cannot. I am sure part of my decision to kill the king was caught up in my idea (oh false, false, fatally false!) that royal power was unreal compared to mine, and that no consequences would fall upon me that I could not dance away from._

_But even with all this, how could I kill? The action was not difficult. I hid Sable’s next breath from him, one night when I snuck into the palace. I…I never saw his face. I left no evidence. I don’t know how to describe this without sounding terrible and inhuman, but I am not likely to find new ways of telling this story within the next few days._

_Twenty years it’s been. I regret killing Sable, but I’ve never managed to mourn for him. Instead, I mourn for my neighbors’ children, sent off to fight in this civil war which, though it would not have started without my actions, could have been stopped by either you or Solen._

_Why does anyone want to be king?_

_Do you want to be a game piece, Mannius? I think I was able to kill the king because that’s all he was to me. Remove him, and the next play succeeds. The king is not a man. The king is a placeholder for power. It is valuable that he appears to be killable. This is the illusion of the king. The man who wears the crown can be killed, even by a shadow adept who never sees his face. But the king cannot die, not when people like you want to take his place._

_Ah, Nur! You would have been able to see then what I realized far too late. A shadow adept may kill a person in secret, but a person was not who I wanted to kill! I wanted to kill a falsehood, and that may only be done by the brightest of lights._

_I could kill the king because I thought he was an idea in the shape of a man. But Sable was only a man._

_You know the next part well. Must I write it? Would that I could write it in fire to scorch your eyes. Would that the harm of your deeds would fall back upon you._

_I suppose this is not the worst thing that I must write in the coming days._

_When I told you I had killed the king—strange. I now find that this telling is a blank space in my memory. I don’t remember how I acted. Cold enough, I suppose, that you could react the way you did. Recoiling in horror, asking how I could do such a thing, and immediately afterwards asking if the killing could be traced to me. I know I told you it could not. I told you it would look simply as if the king had died in his sleep. His body was frail enough that it would not appear too unusual._

_You are lucky I am not the murderer you pretend to think me, Mannius. I saw the smile in your eyes as you said you must now solemnly bid for the power of the crown. And then. Then you said. How dangerous I had proven myself. How ~~bloodthirsty~~. How sorry a king you would be if you allowed people like me not only to live, but live forever. You must now reconsider the opening of the Moonpools, you said. You must think on it. Nothing could be done, in any case, until after your coronation._

_If I was the kind of murderer you have painted me as for your convenience, I would have killed you then. But I have always been more fool than monster, though I have fooled my way through many monstrous deeds. You were not faceless, Mannius. And thus you lived, lived to walk away from me as I clung to the wall of your fine house to stop myself from collapsing under the weight of your broken oath. Why did I not expect your actions? I cared so little for the king, why would you care at all for the adepts? And I had served your purpose._

_Now, decades later, I wonder if you were not a little honest in your reaction. I do believe you wanted me to kill the king—but perhaps did you think I was going to do so with a knife, or poison? Did you think that magic was safe? ~~Even light adepts~~_

_But I am sure you never intended to open the Moonpools. How could you? A worm who wants to be king. I’ve never known you to relinquish any power once you had it. Would that I had known that when I met you._

_What else do you want them to forget? Oh, yes. The entire civil war._

_Your faction was fighting with Solen’s not a week after you both put yourself forth as rightful heirs. I suppose you both intended the war, since you were both prepared._

_I intend to write as little as possible of this. Even if the people do not remember why they remember such things, I want them to remember the things they saw, the things they did, in the hope that they will abhor such things in the future._

_Your factions pitched battles on the streets of the City of the Moon. But the battles between armies were not as bad as the calmer years, when uneasy truces barely kept the kingdom alive, and death came in ones and twos when your supporters clashed. Gang brawls, that’s what they were. Everyone had to choose a side, and no one dared to walk alone._

_I doubt that most of those who died could have picked you or Solen out of a crowded room. I doubt that most of those who died could have told a stranger the differences between the things you promised for the kingdom._

_You are lucky I have so little time, Mannius. I would like to write more of the war, to shame you, for I think that if any slight part of your heart is still capable of feeling that emotion, the things I have to tell you would make you feel it._

_Yet perhaps you would only smirk and ask me why I did not kill Solen, if the war so appalled me. Well, Mannius, I am a quick learner. With so many supporters, killing Solen would not have stopped the war. Killing you would not have stopped the war. It would have been like extinguishing the brand that set a forest aflame._

_Though I myself am a killer, I do not understand war, and I can only say it seemed most like a disease upon the kingdom, but a disease of the—blood. You and Solen, tumorous as you are, or were, would not have left the kingdom well upon your excision._

_I don’t_

_I don’t know how to make it well again_

_You’re making me make the kingdom sicker, Mannius, for your own power! And why, why, why, what do you lack? What void will kingship fill? There is no heart without a void, not here nor anywhere else in this world and I_

_Why do I even bother? You will take none of this to heart, you have none. What else can I think of a man who took me prisoner, not from my own house, but from the doorway of the refuge of children orphaned when their parents found themselves crossing the ever-changing factional boundaries at the wrong time? Your forces clearly knew my whereabouts. Are the children safe? As if you would know. You were too busy collecting the pieces that would form the rickety tower of your rule._

_Your final victory over Solen’s forces came soon after my capture. As I understand it you have imprisoned many other adepts since then, on charges of treason. This would be the treason of refusing to support either side, I am sure, or perhaps the treason of hiding poor bakers and weavers and such people from the thugs of one or another faction? Even Light itself would understand why most people wore blue ribbons on their sleeves with red ones in their pockets, or red ribbons on their sleeves with blue ones in their pockets, after so many years. The deception, the treachery, as you would call it, was the truth._

_What are you accusing the adepts of, Mannius? Are you accusing the light adepts of making spaces of order and peace where the chaos of your war could not touch? Are you accusing the shadow adepts of hiding children from swords?_

_Ah. But how could I forget? My Nur is the only light adept you have imprisoned, and even now you are keeping him well, telling him of an alliance you wish to form between the adepts and the crown._

_Oh damned flickering. He’ll believe you. You’re telling the truth, after all, just not the whole truth._

_I suppose you don’t want me to write about the alliance. That’s something that you want to be remembered for._

_Have I written all the history you want to be erased, Mannius?_

_The light adepts and shadow adepts were once one._

_We drew our magic from the water of the moonpools._

_The gift of immortality was given to certain of us if we submerged ourselves, light and shadow, in the moonpools under the full moon._

_We thought we were distant from the political powers of this land, but we were wrong, and we were deceived into revealing our secrets—no, I am mistaken, not secrets—our knowledge that no one had yet asked for—to the census takers._

_The Codex of the Adepts was written to make the king fear for his power._

_He placed guards around the moonpools to prevent adepts from bathing in them._

_Two hundred years later, and most adepts think this is the right way of things, they have been told they are being protected, rather than that they are the ones the king thinks he needs protection from._

_There is a breach growing between the light and shadow adepts and that is wrong._

_You told me you would open the moonpools and allow the breach to be healed if you were king._

_I killed King Sable to make this happen._

_After I did this, you told me you could not open the moonpools to a murderous class of people._

_After I did this, you started a war with Solen, the other person the king could have likely chosen as an heir._

_The civil war between you made this kingdom a horror of division, revealing a blight in the soul of the land._

_Instead of doing anything to heal this blight or acknowledging that it exists, you captured me and ordered me to write this book so that your strange path to kingship could be forgotten._

_You don’t want your propagandistic link between shadow adepts and treason forgotten, do you? Of course not._

_But here is something perhaps you do wish forgotten: You fear shadow adepts. You know we cannot be controlled, and so you fear us. You fear us to the point of death._

_This is the threat you made to me, which now no one will ever know: If I did not write this book for you, this book of forgetting, you would begin to execute shadow adepts, first for treason, then for other reasons, which you assured me you would find, once the Codex of the Adepts was discovered by you as you began the grand project of organizing the kingdom’s knowledge. You would pass laws forbidding the congregation of light adepts, and no child chosen by shadow would be allowed to live. Thus magic would be safe, and magic users safe tools guarded carefully by wealthy lords._

_And I don’t think you would have made even this concession had you not your slight education, which told you that all other lands have their magics, too. You would suffer the practice of light magic only because you feared the magics of other lands._

_Your mind is more murderous than mine ever was._

_But if I wrote this book, such harsh measures need not be taken. With your safe history in everyone’s mind, no one would know there was a past so dangerous to you to be brought back. No one would know that you could be anything but benevolent, and so you would be._

_Though your goal remains the same._

_When this book is written, when the shadow working which I_

_When everything is over and I am dead, shadow magic will be illegal. You will claim that shadow adepts’ ability to do physical harm makes it clear that this magic is entirely dangerous and not a true magic of the land. But shadow adepts not seen practicing magic will not be arrested nor executed through the king’s power._

_As for the light adepts. The breach between the adepts has grown such, and the chaos of the war has been such, that most light adepts and shadow adepts live apart from each other now. As for the few that don’t—you assure me such things can be taken care of in the confusion of the last few days before your coronation. When everything is over and this book is finished, the light adepts will, just as the shadow adepts, find themselves believing that they were never linked to the other group. You will offer them a school where they can teach the practice of light. Their festivals you will make the kingdom’s festivals. You say you will make them an inseparable part of this land—as if they were not ALREADY. You will write yourself a place in history as the first king to recognize that the magic of the light adepts was—if I had to say this I would choke—of equal importance to the land as the unbroken bloodline of the king._

_But what will you do with the moonpools?_

_May the open eye and winking eye look mercifully upon me, but I must ask you this. If you forget the spell may fail and oh, my brothers and sisters, the living may undo even the most grievous offenses against them but the dead may do nothing._

_A cage made of gold may seem a generous gift to those who don’t know the furnace to melt it will never be lit._

_So. You will brick over the moonpools, and make them into wells and fountains. Never again will there be the risk that adepts might become immortal and show how little power the king has in the vast and dappled universe._

_But…you have enough power, and this I know all too well. Your guards hit me on the head today when I did not drink all the water they had given me fast enough. Do you think after all that has happened I will resist at the last?_

_I won’t. I believe your threats, Mannius. I can detect no secrets when you speak of what you will do to the adepts if I do not obey you. I can detect no concealment when you told me the less awful alternative. I believe you. I believe you._

_And now_

_And now for the last._

            “Sandy?” Pitch asks. The forgotten plates bearing the remnants of the pie they ate but did not taste rest on either side of the book. “I know I’ve argued before—before I knew anything that we’ve just learned, oh sweet night—that shadow magic doesn’t rely on snuffing out light. This is…not absolutely true. Blowing out a candle, snuffing a lamp—these things make shadow magic more powerful. Not by much, but flame is not pure light.”

            “Pitch.” Sandy looks up at him, his expression troubled. “I know…I don’t know exactly what’s coming. But I need to know how it ends, and I want to find that out tonight. I want to understand, no matter what.”

            “I just can’t help but think of us in their places,” Pitch whispers.

 

            _I drank some of the shadow I’ve been using for ink before writing this last part. The working I spoke before I drank was one familiar to me. One I had said many times before to those who had barely escaped the violence of the war. It is a working to hide the emotions from the self, for a little while. To steady the hands and calm the breath. I wasn’t sure if I could use it on myself, but, mercy of light, I have proved capable._

_But I will soon prove myself capable of anything._

_To save the adepts, this is what I will do. When the moon is full, I will be taken to a moonpool. One of the Hunter’s Moon ones, I believe, since it is that time of year and starting there will make the magic more powerful. I told Mannius this. Perhaps he has asked Nur for confirmation, though Nur will not be told the purpose of the question._

_My working falters as I pen my lover’s name. As well it should, but I must therefore write quickly. Nur will also be taken to a moonpool, where he will meet me._

_It is essential to your illusion, Mannius, that at this moment I do not seem a prisoner._

_Nur. I will be trembling. Nur. I do not know if I will be able to weep. Nur. Will you think I am shaking with joy and anticipation? Nur. They will have told you that after much deliberation, and separate consideration of you and me, that we are going to be made immortal._

_It will be an odd kind of immortality._

_After we bathe in the moonpool, they will let us stay together until just before dawn. They do not want to make you suspicious. They do not want you to struggle. I will do my best not to seem strange to you._

_Mannius will spend the night checking this book one more time, though after today I am going to ask the guards to see if he can come and take it from me until the full moon. I will amend anything I am told to amend, but I do not think I will want this thing sleeping beside me._

_Just before dawn they will wake us, and bring us to a hill within the city where the dawn light will strike early. To apologize to you, they will say, for keeping you from dawn as we were being vetted. One guard will be carrying a basin when we go. One guard will be carrying an obsidian knife, may it be so sharp the wounds it makes might not be felt._

_There, on the hill, they will bind you. I do not know if you will struggle. I wish you were able to understand me and stand by me in this, but what a hideous thing to ask of a sacrifice. What a hideous thing to ask of a light adept, to participate in a project to conceal the past._

_They will subdue you if you struggle, but you will be awake for all._

_The king demanded the most powerful shadow working, the most powerful knowledge-binding. He knows what he did to make me admit that this was the way to create such a thing._

_Things written by shadow adepts are made half-secret even if they are written in mere ink, in common Selenean. What I have written now, in shadow, in the language of the Moon, is already being forgotten by those who have no cause to think of it. But other histories and other records would make them remember._

_If I had snuffed out a candle before each time I started to write, and spoken certain words above the book, even soldiers would be already forgetting that there had been a civil war. Still, they would believe it if an authority told them there had, and they would wonder why they had forgotten._

_But what I am going to do before saying those words of power (my last, and I must be able to say them all) is this:_

_I am going to snuff out the purest and most powerful light I know, lifted still higher by the first fresh sunlight of dawn, and I am going to snuff him out with my own shadow self._

_I wish I could have kept the power-making method to myself. I wish I could give Nur a death as kind as I gave the king. But the magic is stronger when shadow engulfs light and so…no I must write quickly now. A knife I hold will slit his throat. The basin will catch his blood and I will drink of it, taking his light within my body to the darkness of the grave. I will drink until his blood loss kills us both. And the working I do as I…. It will hide everything in this book from the thoughts and memories of the people of the Lunar Kingdom, forever, even if confronted with evidence of the truth. It must. Or I will have killed my love for nothing._

_The working wears thin. Let this be the end of this book, then. The tears waiting behind my eyes and the screams waiting in my throat will soon be called to their places. I hope my guards are shamed by them._

            Sandy finds no more text after this in the book, though he flips through the few dozen empty pages following it to check. After doing so, he turns the pages back so the last words are visible once more. He withdraws his hand from the leaves. It trembles in the candlelight.

            It is a long, long moment before either Pitch or Sandy speaks.

            “Perhaps shadow adepts ought to be hated,” Pitch says, his voice sounding strangled, “if one of us could do such a thing.”

            “No!” Sandy says vehemently. “No. She did what had to be done. The blame lies squarely with Mannius here.” He stands and paces the room. “Pitch, I—you know what this means? It means that everything about the Luminous Academy, everything we learned as children, everything, EVERYTHING is based on nothing but _lies_ , falsehoods and secrets and how did we not dim for so long under the weight of such history, how for over a thousand years could such a—a—an abomination stand? How could we even learn to open doors with such great hypocrisy beneath our very feet, in the mortar and stone of the building? How could we think we…how could I think I was separate from the king, his personal dreamweaver, his gold, we were nothing but _pets_ , oh, I am sure the housecat thinks the bell that keeps it from hunting a very fine ornament—”

            “Sandy,” Pitch interrupts. “I am going to say a very shadow-adept thing, now, and if it sounds utterly wrong to you then continue in your anger, so that I may be drawn into its fire as well. What I want to say is this: All the history that happened after the erasure Mannius I ordered happened without knowing of that alteration and is still as real as any history can be. The traditions of the Luminous Academy and the light adepts, the rituals of the shadow adepts, how both groups adapted to their places in society after the erasure—that’s over a thousand years of reality we’re still a part of. Just like the centuries after the Dimming are still real, and must still be contended with. The consequences of actions taken due to a falsehood do not disappear when the truth becomes known, just as the actions do not become undone. Light adepts and shadow adepts _were_ able to survive, and even thrive, while separated.” Pitch pauses.

            Sandy takes a deep breath. “Are you saying this erasure is nothing but another symptom of the true problem?”

            “Zalla wrote something like that, didn’t she? I think she was right. But what I really wanted to say—or what I think I want to say—is that this erasure is just as fundamental to the past of the adepts as the legends that were erased. As are the legends that replaced them. If Mannius wanted to start history over with himself, the way he succeeded…I think he did succeed, but that did not put him in as much control of history as he thought. Since he ensured no one knew what he did, he became just another king.”

            Sandy drums his fingers on the back of his chair. “I think I see,” he says, slowly. “I don’t think Mannius—as Zalla writes him—would have been pleased to know how influential the light adepts became. He would have been even less pleased to learn about light-dreams, much less the city’s and the king’s reliance on them. We were never successfully tamed. It was just that we, and our captors, were entirely unaware of the boundaries of our enclosure.” He walks to the windows and throws open the curtains that had been closed at sunset. Outside, the water of the Great Moon Fountain reflects the moonlight as it endlessly flows from glass mouths and blooms into the pool below. “This fountain confirms that, and what you said, Pitch. I remember learning that a well house stood there before the fountain was built—to honor the light adepts. It was moonpool water, then. And though the pool’s not very deep, a pair of adepts could certainly still submerge themselves in it under a full moon. Everything about the erasure could have come crashing down within only a few years, because no one would have known why the well houses were so carefully built to keep out the moon’s light.

            “And yet, until us, nothing like that ever happened. The breach held.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline help: Present day: P and S read Zalla's book.  
> -500 P and S become immortal  
> -about 1500 Zalla's book is written  
> -about 1700 the Codex of the Adepts is written
> 
> Why could Pitch even see the book to begin with? He's still got light in his eyes, remember? This is something Zalla's working wouldn't have accounted for, given the growth of the breach between light and shadow adepts in her day. 
> 
> Also, please keep in mind that Zalla has her own limitations, like every writer. Not everything she wrote was exactly correct, particularly as regards origins.


	16. Musings on Necessary Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy discuss how to break the powerful water workings blocking the moonpools. North comes to visit Sandy, to tell him of a recent unfortunate change in Jack's situation, and asks for help. North notices the half-finished cup of tea that belongs to neither he nor Sandy.

            “So, all we need to do in order to allow more adepts to be found is to get the moonpool water flowing through the fountain and into the wells at the well houses again,” Sandy says the next afternoon to a recently woken Pitch.

            Pitch rubs his eyes. This practical angle of conversation hadn’t been what he was expecting so early in the day, especially given that last night had been spent discussing what Zalla’s writing meant to their understanding of their own magics. It had amounted to surprisingly little: the unity Zalla wrote about still seemed inaccessible to them, and when the conversation had begun to circle around why she and Nur had been able to touch with no trouble, Sandy had excused himself rather abruptly.

            “You make it sound so simple,” Pitch says. He pours himself a cup of tea, and pulls his dressing gown closer around his shoulders. Outside, the wind flings chill autumn rain in all directions. It would have been an absolutely fantastic day, Pitch thinks, if only Zalla had mentioned what made her and Nur’s physical love possible.

            “If it sounds simple, then I’m closer to using shadow magic than ever.” Sandy reaches for his hair, but thinks better of it, opting to worry the spoon from the sugar bowl instead. If he messes up his hair too much, he’ll have to bathe and wash it to fix it. And given the weather and the general atmosphere of the house, getting naked seems like a particularly unwise option.

            “Go on,” Pitch says.

            “I’m almost certain that the powerful water-working we felt in the tunnels at every bricked-over doorway is what’s keeping the moonpool water from actually ending up in the wells and fountain. The problem, though, is that I know nothing about breaking or even altering magic that’s not light or shadow. And, as for you…” He trails off and makes an apologetic face at Pitch.

            “No, you’re right. I really don’t know that much about water magic.” Pitch sips his tea and finds it nearly stewed. The evidence suggests he doesn’t know much about water at all, even if it’s only meant to be boiled. “Anyway, the kinds of things I can do aren’t the kinds of things that need doing, in this case.” He reaches for the sugar spoon, only to find it missing. He catches Sandy fiddling with it and meets his eyes. Sandy puts the spoon down, pushes it towards Pitch, and withdraws his hand. It’s still warm from Sandy’s hands when Pitch picks it up, and he shakes his head while adding sugar to his tea. If he’s noticing little things like that so early in the day, they’re going to have to spend most of it apart.

            “However, we fortunately have a user of water magic who might be willing to help us,” Sandy says.

            “There are a lot of reasons we shouldn’t rely on Jack.”

            Sandy folds his hands and looks at Pitch levelly. “He doesn’t need to do much.”

            “How do you figure that?”

            “While you were still asleep this morning I went down to look at Zalla’s book again. I could see it perfectly clearly, and I remembered everything in it. Her working was vastly powerful, but I think it’s broken now, just by our one reading. Of course, people can’t remember things they’ve never learned, so it doesn’t immediately affect us—anyway, the point is that I think Jack would only need to alter the working in the smallest way for the whole thing to cease to function. He’s strong enough for that, as long as he pushes in the right place.”

            “Which neither of us have the skills to find.”

            “It’s not like we have to get it done _today_ , Pitch. Anyway, I’ve been thinking more about Zalla’s final working—”

            Pitch shudders.

            “And you haven’t. I know. But I think there’s something important there, about how to create something powerful that will last.”

            “Sandy, this isn’t an academic exercise. She was forced to spill and drink her lover’s blood.”

            Sandy sits very still. “Yes. That is what she did. And that act needs to have meaning. We can’t focus solely on the horror of it. Spilled blood has meaning, Pitch.”

            “All of it?”

            “It means _something_.” A glass bead clattering in the corner of a small room. “It has to. Otherwise no patterns could exist. True things couldn’t be said.”

            “I don’t understand such talk anymore,” Pitch says. It’s not entirely true, and Sandy can tell, but with a real solution before them, he decides to drop the subject for now.

            “Well, this is what I understand,” he says. “Things have been going wrong in this kingdom for a very long time, and now we finally have the opportunity to start setting them right again. Getting the moonpool water to flow again will be the first step.”

            Pitch drains his cup of tea and pours a new one at once. He doesn’t drink it, though, instead wrapping his long fingers around the porcelain for warmth. “What were you about to say about making a working last?”

            “I was going to say that I think the working that keeps the moonpool water from flowing probably required as much skill and power from the water adepts as Zalla’s required from her as a shadow adept. But their working wouldn’t have been considered an act of destruction, but rather as the creation of an ongoing, active legacy.”

            “So it will need an equally powerful act of destruction to undo?”

            “No…that is, I hope not. I very much hope not.” Sandy looks down at the table, as if the wood grain will provide some sort of answer. “Like I said, just a nudge should do.”

            “I...Sandy.” Pitch frowns and sips his bitter tea like he deserves it. “If such destruction is required for the restoration of the adepts, I will aid you.”

            “Can I hold you to that statement in general?” Sandy asks, his voice carefully neutral. Pitch begins to nod, and Sandy immediately holds a hand up to stop him. “Don’t. You assume that such an act would not involve me.”

            “How could it? This thing you are speaking of has to do with _water_ , and in any case you will need to be ali… _around_ for the restoration you speak of…”

            “There is much I still need to think on,” Sandy says. “With a source, new adepts could start from scratch. Perhaps that is the only way to cure the sickness of this land.”

            Pitch forces himself to take several deep breaths before answering. “You are the only balm this land has against its sickness.”

            “I am only a product of the Academy,” Sandy says softly, though he knows he would not be able to say it in Shining. “But our destruction was not what I was first thinking of. I hope the freeing of the water doesn’t require such destruction, because I think Jack might be part of the creative legacy of the working.”

            “How do you mean?” Pitch asks. “Adepts can’t have children.”

            Sandy nods. “But the last time I saw water adepts in the city, when such a working could have been performed, there were many non-adepts in the party. I think starting a bloodline within the city might have been part of whatever magic they were performing.”

            Pitch drums his fingers on the table. “Do you have any reason other than the working we sensed to think that?”

            “I have…guesses,” Sandy says. “I hope to be able to convince you without speaking in Shining. Doing so, these days…” he looks into Pitch’s eyes. “It makes me feel less like myself, and more like Light. I don’t know if this is wrong or right, but I don’t like it, and I thought you ought to know.”

            A long, long moment passes. “This is not information I would have wished to hear,” Pitch says. “Thank you for telling me. I haven’t experienced anything similar with Shadow, but, when it is revelations that are called for, it is your powers that will be taxed. I…” he looks at Sandy, at the ceiling, around at the cupboards. “If I can help in any way, let me know.”

            “I will.” Sandy sighs. “Right now, though, I just want you to listen to my guesses. So. Jack recognized the bottle we had of water labelled as being from the Lifeblood River. He associates it with his earliest memories of his power. So I think he’s a descendant of one of the Meray who were in the city soon after the Nightmare War, and that drinking the water—which helped the water adepts do whatever they did when they were here—awakened his powers, allowed water to choose him, whatever. Without a legacy of blood, I don’t think the remnants of the source of his power would have resonated within him so strongly.”

            “It’s a neat theory, but how do we test it?” Pitch says. “If it’s the creative legacy we need to break in order to break the working, Jack isn’t who we need to concern ourselves with, what with his level of power.”

            “I suppose patience would be better than the alternative,” Sandy says. “But I’ve also been thinking about _why_ the working was done, and—”

            Just then, a heavy knocking at the front door interrupts him.

            “They won’t see me,” Pitch says, and Sandy smiles gratefully at him before hurrying off to see who their visitor is.

            When he opens the door, North stands before him, alone, his scarlet coat darkened to the color of dried blood by the rain. “Something has changed, Sandy,” he says. “Something to do with Jack.”

            While his coat dries by the kitchen stove and a cup of tea slowly cools in his hands, North explains what he knows and what everybody else knows. A newspaper, drawn from a deep coat pocket and only slightly damp, backs up North’s statements. “FROST BOY THREAT TO LIGHT ADEPT” the headline screams.

            “I do not recommend the article,” North says, “but headline is more important.”

            “What’s happened, North?” Sandy asks, feeling ill and guilty, as if discussing the possibility of Jack’s death had put him in danger.

            North grimaces. “Unrelated things being made related. No. No, I must say it all, you have not been here long. The article speaks of how your dreams stopped once you were in close proximity to Jack.”

            “But that’s not—” Sandy begins, and North spreads his hands. Sandy lets him continue.

            “This is written of as big, big problem. Then, article writes how Jack is seen sneaking away from the palace to come to this house, without normal precautions. He tried to keep the whole thing secret, so, obviously he is plotting to kill you and take his place as only magic user in City of the Moon and Lunar Kingdom. If only, if only, you could have worked together, the king says. You could have made the kingdom stronger than ever.”

            “North, this is—this is a load of shit! But…would it help if I stormed over to the palace right now?” He paces by the table for a few moments before stopping suddenly. “No. No, it probably wouldn’t.” He sighs heavily and turns back to North.  “Because they know that what they’re saying is false. And revealing the truth to everyone…that wouldn’t help Jack’s position either.”

            North frowns and places one large hand flat on the paper. “I am sorry that you are mixed up in this. For several weeks now there has been tension increasing between Jack and the Apolyon. He has been asking more and more of Jack, in both magical and social spheres. Jack has been meeting these challenges—if only barely—but I do not think this is what the king wanted. I think he wanted him to fail, so he would not remain so beloved.” He pats the paper a few times and turns to look out into the rain-washed courtyard. “Jack is too strong for Apolyon. If Jack had begun to realize it, he would not have been able to hide it. Again, I am sorry you are being used this way. One conversation with Jack should not have been enough—”

            “North,” Sandy interrupts. “Two conversations.”

            North raises his eyebrows, but says nothing.

            “Jack _did_ come to this house in secret, two days ago. Alone. To talk about magic, like I mentioned at the tea.”

            “Interesting,” North says. He takes a sip of tea as he gathers his thoughts, his sharp blue gaze travelling slowly around the kitchen. “I think I should also tell you the wildest of the article’s claims.”

            “Please do. I need to understand as much of this as possible.”

            “The article says that they thought it seemed malicious without purpose, at first, that the Nightmare King should have stolen Jack’s records along with the other missing books. But now, it all makes sense. The Nightmare King stole the records so that Jack would have no reason to return to his family, and would have to stay in the circles of the king. With such power and social standing, he would thus be able to get close to you, and kill you for the Nightmare King.”

            Sandy gapes at North. “That’s—no one who knows Jack could think that! I’ve only met him twice, and it’s just absurd! Him? Plot a murder?”

            “I thought it was quite a curious theory myself,” North says, leaning back in his chair, “since it seems to assume that Nightmare King has been trying and failing to kill you for five hundred years. A more efficient monster would have attacked you on your defenseless little island, I think. But maybe that is just the industrialist in me speaking.

            “Anyway, there is some divided opinion as to whether he is acting of his own free will or if Nightmare King has sorcerously seduced him in some way. I will not be insulted if you feel you need to read the article to believe that that is in there.”

            “Who’s in charge of these articles—no, no, that’s not important right now. North, you didn’t come here in person just to give me the paper.”

            North nods. “I had been scheduled to attend another luncheon with Jack today. Early this morning, I received a note which instructed me that the location of the event was being changed—from the Bennett house to the Palace. A very unusual change, yes? Jack was not in attendance while we ate, but afterwards, we were led by guards to a part of the palace quite different from our banqueting hall, and we all saw there what the article calls ‘being safeguarded’.”

            Sandy’s hands clench into fists. “Please don’t be vague here, North. I can imagine anything.”

            “He is not in a dungeon,” North says, “at least in appearance. His new suite of rooms is as fine as any in the Palace, save that they have no windows, nor running water. And I thought the whole Palace had been modernized. We were invited to greet him.”

            “WHAT!”

            North smiles grimly. “Afterwards, the king himself met with us, explaining that this was for the mutual protection of Jack and the people around him. With two different magics in the city now, one could not be too careful. When I left I saw that this newspaper had been put out, and I came here, because it seemed to me that terrible things did not happen to you and Jack when you were in close proximity to each other. So the danger must be caused by some other factor.”

            “I don’t understand what Apolyon thinks will be taken from him,” Sandy says.

            “Without Jack’s magic he would not have the hold on so many minds and hearts in his upper circles. Jack’s disobedience means possible disobedience from all. To tell the truth, Sandy, I think he is the sort of man who seeks power for its own sake. He wishes to be the source of order and control throughout the kingdom. This is not very surprising. This is what he has been taught a king should be. With magic, of course, this is difficult. He was lucky for a while that you stayed so far away, and that the Nightmare King is so hated. Jack could only be allowed if he remained under his absolute control.

            “Unfortunately…now he is not.”

            “There was a source. Not for control, but something better…there is a source, and he’s not it,” Sandy says softly. “It’s like…it’s like he’s someone who sees a bleeding wound and tries to stop the bleeding by draining the body rather than bandaging it. And it’s not just him. He’s just the one doing it now.”

            North hums. “That sounds like something entirely under your purview, not mine,” he says. “Now: I admit I came here because I am worried about Jack. I do not think the king considers him anything more than a tool, and one that has recently broken, in his eyes. I cannot help, because the king will rightly say that I have no authority to speak on magic. I thought you might be able to do something—even though I am sorry to bring this to your door, this _is_ the truth—since you have been somewhat a mystery to the city and the king. You have a certain, I will say, _mythic_ authority. I do not know what bonds tie you to the king but I think you are one who could easily break them. You are…a bit of a wildcard.”

            “If I can save Jack without destroying the city, I will,” Sandy says, and North laughs.

            “Ah, that is just it! This is why you are good to be around, Sandy. You say things like that and you mean every word. I hope to spend much time in your company in happier days. And not just in yours,” he adds.

            “Yes, Jack will be with us in happier days,” Sandy replies distractedly, as he shuffles the various puzzle pieces in his mind, trying to determine if they can be fitted into one shape.

            “That is not fully what I meant,” North says, a shrewd glint appearing in his eye. “I am starting to think you may be even more of a wild card than anyone knows.”

            “What do you mean?” Sandy asks, forcing himself away from the patterns and back to the present.

            “My visit this afternoon was unexpected, yes?” North says, and Sandy nods. “And I have heard you live with no permanent staff.”

            Again Sandy nods.

            “I have to confess an intense curiosity, then, as to who left a half-finished cup of tea on your table, and seems to have vanished into thin air upon my arrival.”

            Sandy looks down at the tea settings—for three—and laughs a little before looking back up at North. “This is really an elementary error, isn’t it?”

            “I am not surprised you made such,” says North. “But, like I said, I am curious. I had thought that I, for the sake of Jack, was going to be the one to push you towards practicing subterfuge.”

            “North.” Sandy stands, though it doesn’t offer him any new advantage in height. “You’ve been very helpful to me so far, and I want to trust you. I…North, I don’t even know what to tell you without giving them away, and maybe even saying so has done that. I don’t like keeping secrets, and this one, I now understand, is one that shouldn’t have needed to be kept at all. But my understanding doesn’t change what everyone ‘knows’ in the Lunar Kingdom, and you are of the Lunar Kingdom, despite the reservations you have about the king.” He runs his hands through his hair. “There’s a lot I want to explain to you, and the person whose teacup that is should be present. But I need you to promise that you will…allow yourself to be introduced to this individual, because you don’t know them yet, no matter what you think and what you’ve heard.”

            “I prom—” North’s eyebrows shoot up and he looks away from Sandy to stare at the doorway to the kitchen, which, as Sandy expects when he turns as well, is now neatly framing Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, dressed far more formally than he had been a few minutes ago while drowsily adding sugar to his tea.

            He smirks, and Sandy rolls his eyes at him, even though he’s starting to think that his somewhat exasperating love of making an entrance is actually a sign of latent light adept inclinations manifesting how they can.

            “Now, Sandy, let’s not go that far,” he says. “Not all the stories about me are false.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the king needs to control Jack because Jack has magic, which everyone in the kingdom needs and wants, even if they don't know it. He doesn't like this because it shows that he's not as vital to the kingdom as he was always taught that he was. He's not the repository of the soul-power of the kingdom. 
> 
> Sandy is more obviously this soul-power, but since he's usually far away on his island, the king could promote him freely. The king can't go back on that, though Sandy is obviously a problem now.
> 
> Pitch and Sandy know that they might need Jack because he's the only descendant of Meray they know of. And, yes, they are totally willing to sacrifice him if necessary. Sandy feels guilty about it, though.
> 
> North just doesn't like how Jack's being treated for his talents, partly because the king has treated his talent with machinery in much the same way: rewarding him to handsomely to say no to anything, and using him to increase the royal stranglehold on magic. But Jack's getting treated worse because he comes from nowhere, and North knows that isn't right.


	17. Leaving Fountain Square

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy and Pitch explain a few things to North. North invites them both back to his house for better protection from the king. Sandy, after a brief consideration of lightning and its uses, agrees.

            “All right. All right,” North says, accenting each deliberate word with a tap of his hand on the table. “Let me see if I have everything sorted so far. You two,” he looks from Sandy to Pitch, “were never enemies like the stories say. The battle between light and darkness that ended the Nightmare War was not a battle at all. That you should be allies is not so strange because the magic of the Lunar Kingdom does have a source, like the heartflame pit, and this source produces both light and shadow adepts—that is, potential adepts. This source is located in springs under this city, which have been blocked with the use of water magic. Jack is most likely a water adept, so you were thinking of asking him to help unblock the source. And then I arrived with the bad news.”

            Sandy and Pitch look at each other, then North, and nod. When they had begun to explain things, a hesitancy on both their parts pertaining to how their relationship was much more than “not enemies”, the method of obtaining immortality, past regicide, and magic done with the aid of spilled blood had led them to tell a story full of gaps. Thankfully, North doesn’t press for more.

            But it seems unfair to let the matter stand like that. “North, you’re shrewd enough to understand that we haven’t told you everything we know about this situation. It’s…complicated, and I think the situation with Jack is far more urgent,” says Sandy.

            “I look forward to hearing more later,” North says thoughtfully. “Maybe more in Lunar Kingdom is adept business than I thought. But now, important question: am I the only person in the city that knows Pitch is here?”

            Sandy’s eyes widen and he inhales sharply.

            “Unfortunately, no,” Pitch replies. “One of the palace gardeners, an earth adept in skill if not in title, knows that I am here. As does Jack Frost. When he visited this house I attempted to teach him to start controlling his power. We did not make much progress, but, in a way that makes honesty rather more complicated than most are led to believe, Jack _did_ sneak out of the palace to collaborate with the Nightmare King.”

            North frowns. “I do not know how long you were planning on keeping your presence a general secret, but it does not seem to me like you will be able to be hidden much longer.”

            “They’re only the two,” Sandy says, though even as he speaks he knows this protest is absurd.

            “Now three,” North says. “But the gardener—as an earth adept, he will not be as familiar with why this secret should be kept.”

            “He promised—” Sandy begins.

            “No one’s likely to ask him for the information,” Pitch says. “But, given that I feature in the false story about Jack…well, it’s more likely for him that someone may…ask.”

            Sandy covers his mouth with his hand and North sighs heavily. “Because of how Jack was presented today, I am guessing the king is trying to keep saying all his actions are voluntary. Also, I think probably Jack was told that his new rooms are for his and others’ safety. He will likely slip into old habits of cooperation. If I know Jack, there should still be some time.” He shakes his head. “But maybe Jack is changing. He should change, he has the right to, so young…but in this case…”

            “In _any_ case, the secret of my presence here isn’t secure,” Pitch says. He gives a fatalistic shrug. “Well, it shouldn’t be our main concern. I concealed myself so that I could easily work with Sandy while we searched for what we needed to know. Now, only action remains, and I hope…” he turns to Sandy and lightly clasps his hands together, “I hope that when we complete what needs to be done, I won’t need to hide anymore.”

            Sandy gives him a warm, yet worried, smile. Even if they open the moonpools, it’s not as if that water will wash away the centuries of fear that have accumulated around him. And for Pitch to assume he will be able to stand by Sandy—well, that assumes that they’ll both be standing at the end of this.

            North clears his throat, and Sandy’s immediately certain that he’s well aware that “not enemies” doesn’t fully describe what he and Pitch are to each other. He wonders for an instant what he _does_ make of them. The necessary absence of touch is probably going to throw him off.

            “Very well, then,” North says. “That will be dealt with when there is something to deal with. As for now, though, I think you both should come to my house tomorrow, prepared to stay for a while.”

            Sandy frowns. “I don’t want to be rude, but why? If Jack is the one the king has imprisoned right now, well, doesn’t that mean that I’m safe, as long as I don’t do anything obviously unexpected? And,” he glances at Pitch, “one of the advantages about this place that I’d rather not give up is that Pitch doesn’t have to conceal himself when we’re here.”

            “And one of the major disadvantages about this place is that you are the only one officially here. With what the king has done to Jack, now—it would be easy for him to come here and invite you in to protective custody in the palace.”

            “I _can_ defend myself, North.”

            “Not in a way that would stop them,” Pitch says quietly. “Not in a way that would save you from the militia, if they were determined to have you. I could. But the shadow magic would be obvious. And then it would be easy for the king to declare you dangerous, because you were in league with me, or declare you in danger, because I was so near to you. Either way, your capture becomes justified.”

            “That is just it,” North says. “If you stay here, the king may force your hand and make it more difficult for you to do whatever you need to do. Also…not many people think about magic these days. At least, not very much. We all accepted your dreams, and I know you have been giving light to people in the city. But the effects of these things…they are mysterious, indirect. It would not be hard for the king to convince the citizens that you had actually been doing something harmful for all these years.”

            “I can’t believe that.” Sandy takes a deep breath and forces his voice to stay steady as he continues. “I have never been enamored of being a story, but nevertheless, I am one, and I have been one for a long time in this country. The king cannot undo a legend so easily. Not without—not without something that is impossible for him.”

            “Sandy,” Pitch says, placing his hand next to his arm on the table. “I would not like to risk anything on what a king can or cannot do, not at this stage. It is not a hardship for me to conceal myself—that’s the easiest thing in the world for me.”

            “Please, Sandy. I do think you are in danger from the king, or may be quite soon. There are things about the timing of events you have told me of that make me think very worrisome things. It will be more complicated for him to reach you at my house, since I am more well known as a person, not a story, around the city, and the king…well, without my help, some of the laws he made will immediately become clear as the prejudiced follies they are.”

            Sandy looks down at the table for a long moment. He and Pitch don’t need to go to North’s house. Not absolutely. With the lightning he had brought, in combination with certain other lights, he could flood the city with the truth, with all the revelations coiled within him. He could shatter every shell of lies accreted over every blood-stained truth. He could even—if he let go of his regard for his human self, freed himself from longing for human things, and let Light fill him as it surely had a right to—call the moonpool water from where it was trapped. He could call it, and it would answer, bursting from beneath the stones in torrents wilder than the Serene in Spring. He could cleanse this city.

            But at what cost? His humanity? No, that wasn’t the sacrifice it should be, with the tidal wave of destruction behind it that he, no longer quite Sandy, might call mercy after the deed was done. The cost would be the city itself. He could cleanse it now, but cleansing was only the first part of treating the old, old wound in every soul that walked its streets. The wound must close afterwards, sealing necessary mysteries within. And he couldn’t do that alone. For that, he needed Pitch, and just as he was endlessly thankful that Pitch had remained Pitch and not become Shadow, he knew that Pitch was equally grateful that he had remained Sandy. They would need each other’s strength to heal the land, but they would need it human, still.

            And so he would not summon the water and assume that with the truth everything would be sorted out. Light might allow him to do so, but Light—Light did not make up the whole pattern, now did it?

            “If Pitch and I are to finish what we need to do from your house, North, I will need all my lights.”

            North relaxes with a sigh. “That is easily done. Tomorrow then. Be ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sandy shouldn't be capable of any destruction at all, should he? This isn't quite true. We know from the example of the Mercy that light adepts can perform acts of violence under certain conditions, determined by Light itself.
> 
> Sandy suspects that Light would allow a great deal of destruction in opening the moonpools, and this is one of his main doubts and fears in regard to Light.
> 
> He trusts the magic will keep him from hurting Pitch by touch, and hurting anyone else by accident, but only when he's aware of himself. Thanks to the Mercy, he knows that he doesn't always agree with Light about where violence should be inflicted. 
> 
> His feelings against physical violence are, in this way, stronger than the magical precepts of Light itself.


	18. North and North's House; How a Light Adept Hides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy arrive at North's house. North tastes light. An understanding of the Dimming. More news of Jack. Action demanded.

            It’s still dark as North’s automated carriage, pulling a covered cart full of silver-wrapped bottles packed in straw and one shadow adept, stops in front of a side entrance to his house. Pitch staggers out of the cart as soon as it stops moving, pushing his tinted glasses onto his face more firmly and tugging at his broad-brimmed hat.

            “It’s too early to deal with this nonsense,” he declares as Sandy climbs out of the passenger seat. “And if that was a dream and I wake up realizing I have to do it again, I’m going to _walk_.”

            “That’s what you get for teasing me about it before,” Sandy says. He moves to pick up a couple of bottles, but North waves him away. A pair of servants pushing small wheeled carts emerge from the house and begin to efficiently load the lights. “I’ll be far more comfortable if all of these bottles are stored in my room, if that’s possible,” Sandy says, watching them nervously, though the bottles barely clink as they stack them.

            North nods and tells the servants to follow them when they’re ready. He starts toward the house, looks around the drive, and his eyes widen. “Where?” he mouths to Sandy.

            Sandy shakes his head. Later.

 

            “North,” Pitch says once they’re all in Sandy’s room and the servants have gone. “I’d prefer not to give you nightmares to remind you that I’m here, but I will if I must. It’s easy for me to conceal myself, not retroactive. If it turns out you don’t have a plan for preventing your servants realizing that you’re entertaining a secret guest, I will hide from you all your memories regarding the layout of this absurdly ostentatious house.”

            “You would threaten the person who is granting you—”

            “North!” Sandy says sharply. “Do you have a plan?”

            “Of course! But—”

            “Then please, if you would, take Pitch, my ally, to his room.” He turns to Pitch. “Does that sound all right to you?”

            “I suppose this house will seem less absurd once I’m sleeping in it,” Pitch mutters.

 

            With Pitch safely sleeping behind the closed burgundy velvet drapes of a large canopied bed in a room across the hall from Sandy’s, North leads Sandy out to his gardens.

            “I did not expect the Nightmare King to be so much like large and mercurial cat,” North remarks.

            Sandy laughs a little at this, and then, to his surprise, the laugh grows and grows until he’s gasping for breath and has to set down the empty bottles he’s carrying for fear that he’ll break them. “I’m sorry,” he wheezes, avoiding North’s perplexed face for fear it’ll set him off again. “It’s just that it’s been so long since—no, actually, no one’s _ever_ mentioned Pitch at all casually around me.” His smile shrinks and grows a little sad as he gathers the bottles up again. “No one’s been able to see how human he is. Not in the Lunar Kingdom.” He shakes his head and looks up at North. “Anyway, he’s only like that in the morning.”

            After a short walk they arrive at a circle paved with bricks, surrounded by painted iron benches, with a brazier in its center. “Will this do?” North asks, and he moves the brazier to the lawn as soon as Sandy nods.

            “Thank you,” Sandy says, “If you’ll excuse me, please, I’ll need to start at once, to catch the dawn.”

            “Of course, of course.” North shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to squint into the sun, just now clearing the tops of the trees that line his garden. “Ah…Master Sandren…would it be all right if I stayed to watch?”

            Sandy doesn’t ever remember non-adepts being invited to watch the gathering of light. He thinks there may have been some official Synod ruling against it. “Yes,” he says. He places the bottle before him and settles cross-legged on the brick. One deep breath. Another. “We used to sing while we collected light,” he tells North. “In harmony.”

 

            When the bottles are full of dawn, this day a pale but blinding gold, Sandy offers North a taste. With no spare vessels of enchanted glass available, Sandy pours the light into North’s cupped hands, warning him to drink it quickly before it dissipates.

            Afterwards, Sandy smiles at him in a way that makes North question his claimed humanity—but then, what would he himself be like, after five centuries?—and asks to be left alone for a while. North, finding himself strangely speechless, simply nods and leaves the brick circle, giving Sandy a little wave as he returns to the house.

 

            In his study, North leans against a windowsill, rubbing one thumb against the opposite palm, and then the other thumb against the other palm, again and again. Where the light hit, the skin seems a little shinier than the rest, a little pinker. _Like a burn that doesn’t hurt_ , North thinks. But that’s not quite right. Thumb to palm, thumb to palm. His thumbs seem rough and—ah, that’s it. The light erased his calluses.

            He takes a deep breath and looks out into the bright day. The windows here don’t face the garden where he left Sandy, and he can only speculate on what he’s doing now. Meditating? North’s never done so himself, but he thinks it might be what he needs now.

            The taste of the sunlight lingers in his mouth, with the tang of oranges and something sharp, fresh, and green that seems familiar, though he cannot name it. There are other flavors, too, but most of these are subtle enough to be overwhelmed by the _feeling_ the light has given him. It warmed—it still warms—his mind and spirit along with his body. He feels hope for the future, both immediate and far-off, he feels he is standing at the edge of some great endeavor, and he feels—in a way he has not been since his youth—inspired. The ideas that come to him now do not press upon him frantically, do not stick, half-born, in the back of his mind, waiting for he and his teams to pull them free. Instead, they flow through his thoughts, not finalized, of course, but definite, patient beginnings.

            “Dawn,” North says into the silence of the book-lined room. “Dawn, when the weather has just begun to cool.” What he feels fits the season, and he nods to himself, believing for the first time that magic is a system—a system of feeling, perhaps; a system of associations; a system with too few cogs, but a system nonetheless.

            He sits down at his desk and removes from a drawer the spool of fine steel wire and toolkit that he likes to use to occupy his hands as he thinks. For most of his life, magic had been dreams: wonderful dreams, yes, but still, only dreams. He hadn’t been familiar with the work of the earth adepts, not in the busy northern town of Cloudsea, which survived primarily thanks to the icy body of water from which it took its name, nor in the City of the Moon, for which he had left Cloudsea. The air adepts rarely had business in the Lunar Kingdom, while the same was true of the fire adepts, who he had been taught did not tend to travel beyond their strongholds in the Empire, due to the hazardous nature of their abilities.

            North bends the wire in a sharper turn than he intended. It was true enough that fire adepts were rarely seen in the kingdom, but everything else he knew about them beyond their existence in the Empire had come from court and king. He might have been told the truth, he might not have. It was difficult to cross the Greater Luciana to see.

            Water adepts, he had never seen.

            So there it was. No magic, save in dreams, for most of his life. It had been one of the things that led him to become a toymaker in the first place: a desire that magic should not be confined to dreams, but since it was, then the fantastic must be created by mundane means, by artfully hidden gears and wires, even if that meant that he, Nicholas, knew all the secrets behind the wonder and could never fully share in it himself.

            When Jack appeared this past spring, everything had changed. Magic no longer confined itself to dreams, and though being around the boy made it clear that whatever was flowing through him was somehow vital, somehow fundamental to everyone and yet mostly absent, North’s understanding of magic had not truly deepened. He had started to think of magic as an unpredictable natural resource, then, that seemed too dangerous for a human being to hold. Certainly it had not improved Jack’s life.

            Master Sandren, on his island, and the Nightmare King, in rumor and in the library, had not seemed human, nor important to his everyday life nor the lives of most people in the city. They had lived in his mind only as stories.

            And then Sandy arrived in the city, only to begin proving him wrong at once. Invited to a party as a curiosity, only to prove himself present, real, and a surprising ally and confidant. Sandy’s calm confidence had once more reshaped North’s understanding of magic. He could see it as something that was well and good and useful for a human to possess, even if the human had to be exceptional for this to be so. And if Sandy was the last who could work with magic in this way, well, this was more Jack’s tragedy, unwillingly caught as he was by an unknowable force.

            But today. Today, that understanding had not just been reshaped, but shattered.

            “We used to sing while we collected light.”

            Just remembering it sends chills down North’s spine. Yes, he had seen the ruins of the Luminous Academy during one tense trip when the king was persuading him to make more farming machines, but had he ever really believed in a time when it had been whole, housing hundreds of adepts and apprentices, while adepts lived and worked in every town and city? Never in a way that had hit him like Sandy’s simple statement of fact and the old, unconcealable sorrow in his golden eyes.

            And then, then! When he sang, the pure, quiet notes had seemed to call the sunlight to his hand, and North had gripped the edge of his bench, feeling as though otherwise he, and it, might fly apart into the clear light of day.

            The song had been—though he could not say how—familiar, though heartbreakingly incomplete. And the magic, changing the untouchable and uncatchable sunlight into this drink, with taste and smell and warmth, this drink of pure power and revelation that, wondrous as it was, was but the raw material for so much more, yet could be drunk by even ones such as he: this, he had understood at once, was not something that could be lost, like water in a drought. It was more than he had ever thought was in the Lunar Kingdom, but it was undeniably, intrinsically, rightly, part of it. The power of Light was not uncontrollable, nor disordered. It was ordered in the way matters of human hearts were ordered, and subject to them. Magic was not alien, not to Sandy, not to Jack, and not even to North, who knew his wonders inside and out and yet could drink light.

            North looks down at the wire he’s been shaping. He’s formed it into a hollow half-sphere, decorated with curls flat against its surface, of varying styles and sizes. It reminds him of something, but he’s not sure what.

            What he is sure of, however, is that there’s a problem in the kingdom deeper than the treatment of Jack, though encompassing it, and he was going to do whatever he could to solve it. To do otherwise would kill him more surely than any executioner.

 

            “How much more should we tell North?” Sandy asks. He runs a finger along the embroidered pattern on one of the chairs in Pitch’s room, while Pitch washes his face. A narrow line of late afternoon sunlight slipping between the curtains provides the only illumination. It falls directly on Pitch’s spine, and Sandy thinks that if it were a blade it would bisect him perfectly. He passes his hand over his eyes, stifling a sigh. Just a few short weeks ago he would have thought of trails of kisses rather than blades if he saw sunlight touching Pitch.

            Then again, just a few short weeks ago he hadn’t known how closely those ideas might be aligned.

            Pitch blots his face with a towel. “I thought you would have been talking with North all morning.” He combs his hair, letting it fall around his shoulders in inky waves even darker than his black shirt. It already looks softer than it had when Pitch arrived on the island. Sandy thinks of what Pitch might end up looking like with regular care, with a stable place to call home…He looks away, remembering the thought that had come to him as he meditated in the early morning light. All such fantasies about Pitch were likely to remain only fantasies, even if they did learn why Nur and Zalla could touch while they could not.

            “Not all morning. I asked him what he knew about the Dimming. We spoke of that. I told him about the first year we found no apprentices. Some other things from the early years. I remembered less than I thought I did.”

            Pitch nods, carefully sidestepping his own memories of that time as he does so. Years becoming lonelier. Years preparing to be the last. Becoming the last. Nothing left behind but duty and desperation. A set of memories well to be hidden away.

            “Pitch.” Sandy says softly, and then no more.

            Still, Pitch understands. “It was Zalla’s working,” he says, looking determinedly at the mirror as he plaits his hair into a single braid. “There was no way for us to conceive of ourselves being the same. To think that our hearts could be right when they told us to be together. And this is not even considering the real the problem of touch. Nor of my banishment.”

            “Nor the way I was still able to accept most of what I had been taught since childhood while you were not,” Sandy says. He wants to ask Pitch how long it took for him to master such a perfect braid with no help, but he’s afraid the answer will be something longer than he wants to hear.

            Pitch turns to him, his arms folded, his mouth set in a thin line. “Sandy. Though I lived in both worlds, I was not less ignorant than you on such matters. Every person chosen by shadow had grown up in a world that condemned them as corrupt, hateful, a perversion of what true magic should be, when it even thought of us at all.”

            “You told me before that shadow adepts tended to live by ones and twos,” Sandy says.

            “We hated ourselves, and each other. The sweetness of shadow, the joy of our power—it could not override a lifetime of stories against us, the laws that bound us, and the way we were treated. Shadow would have to be far sweeter yet for it to withstand all this, even most of the tine.” He passes his hand quickly though the sunbeam. “Besides, how could I not think there was something wrong in my very being when the touch of the best one I knew could burn me? Sandy. It took me so long to be able to ask the right questions. Now, I think that I couldn’t have done it unless I had travelled so far away from Zalla’s working.”

            Sandy nods. “ _All will be well someday_. It does seem to be working out perfectly, doesn’t it? Everything that happened, necessary for a someday coming soon. And yet, even so…oh, can I really have spoken that? With the long memories of pain and solitude we both have, and will not shake off so long as we live?”

            “‘Well’ is not perfect. I believe you spoke the truth.”

            “I know I spoke the truth,” Sandy says. “That does not stop me from wishing to rage at how vague it is, and how it does not seem to care for our human hearts at all.” He frowns. “You never answered my first question. So. I’ve talked to North about the Dimming, and the tunnels we found under the library. He knows that the moonpools are our source. How much more should we tell him?”

            Pitch stands and shrugs on his jacket. “Why do you think we ought to keep some things from him?”

            “Because there’s too much! Because as much as he wants to help—and he does—he’s still wary of you! How can we explain what Zalla did without making her into just another shadow adept villain? And if we avoid that, how can we stop Mannius from seeming like a villain? Yes, Mannius! Pitch, I think the problem of the Lunar Kingdom runs even deeper than that terrible time, and the villain may have no face—or everyone’s face. And how can we solve it? The moonpools, the king, magic—all the lives in the kingdom! So much has to change, Pitch. I don’t know if the plain truth will help. I don’t want more fighting, I don’t want more war, I don’t want more choosing sides.”

            “Sandy,” Pitch says, and when he looks at him Sandy sees that he’s smiling. “I don’t think we have to weigh all that when talking to North. Now. I trust you, Sandy. And I trust that you’ll be able to tell the truth so that everyone who hears will believe what they need to believe. You’re good at that, remember.”

            Sandy blinks hard a few times and smiles back. “Yes. Yes. All right. Let’s go, North is probably wondering what’s taking so long.”

 

            “When this house was being built, there was some trouble with construction of the cellar,” North explains as Sandy and Pitch follow him downstairs. “Also with digging of house well—we are too needy for water because of small workshops here to work with other city water lines.”

            “What kind of trouble?” Sandy asks. The three of them exit the staircase to a wide hallway paved with flagstones. North turns a small dial near the door and the gas lamps along the hall flare to life.

            “Workers trying to dig well in most likely place to find water kept falling ill.” North leads them past several doors bearing metal clasps that hold either wood or paper signs listing the contents of the rooms. _Spare parts for prototypes 343A-552F. Wine. Pantry. House gas and hot water maintenance. Blueprints._ (The wooden sign here is joined by a paper chart marking thrice-daily humidity checks.)

            “Nothing too bad, but so they could not work. They would always get better as soon as they left—and then come back, get sick again. Ended up digging the well somewhere else. But the interesting thing is this: The reason I and my team thought we should dig well in this one particular place was because when foundation was built, this edge of the house was where we had found remnants of what we thought then was part of an old sewer system. And the even more interesting thing is that when foundation was being built, workers got sick when working around this part, just like with well. And, in the end, there was nothing to do about what else we found. Not even dynamite could budge it. Or so we thought. I am curious to see what you will say.” North pulls open the door at the end of the hallway—this one bearing no clasp or label—and leads them into a shallow, unfinished room.

            To their right, Pitch and Sandy see the remnants of what can only be more of the tunnel system they had entered through the library, given the color of the bricks and the remaining grooved floor. Newer brick blocks the tunnel where the foundation of the house ends. More interesting, however, is the structure that the tunnel would have led to, now partially uncovered in North’s cellar. A shallowly curved wall of ancient gray stone pushes past the straight lines of the foundation, and where the tunnel would have met it, new stone inserted in an attempt to blend with the old stone is clearly visible, though much worse for wear than anything Pitch and Sandy had seen previously. Sandy touches a fanlike pattern of black scorch marks on the stone, and Pitch bends down to examine some broken pieces of stone protruding from the base of the wall.

            “They tried to dynamite this?” Sandy asks. He knows he probably should be feeling angry, but mostly he’s baffled. “It didn’t occur to anyone that a previously unknown human construction might be important to investigate?”

            “Actually, the surveying advisor did give us some information,” North says. “Before the king gave this land to me, it was a public park, and before that, a grazing commons. Apparently,” he continues, folding his arms as both adepts continue their investigation, “this was likely the location of an old city well. It was strongly recommended that we destroy it in favor of a modern hygienic system. The sewer tunnels seemed like strong evidence at the time—at least as I was told of it. I was not often near the construction in its early stages.”

            “May we credit you with seeing that something was wrong with that story as soon as you observed this?” Pitch asks.

            North nods. “Whatever that tunnel was used for, it was never a sewer.”

            “They told you the truth about it being a well house, though,” Sandy says. He turns to Pitch. “I can sense the water working here, like the others. I think it seems…very slightly different, but I’m not sure. I may be misremembering.”

            “It was probably the water working that prevented the wall from getting damaged,” Pitch comments, pointing to the fragmented stone at the base. “I’m pretty sure those used to be the stairs that led up to the surface well house.”

            “And the well houses used to give access to moonpool water?”

            Pitch and Sandy nod. “Not for a long time though,” says Sandy. “I’m not sure when they stopped doing so. There was so much else to deal with, back then, and neither of us knew how important they were.”

            North frowns thoughtfully. “I know there are some things you are not telling me,” he says, “so what I am thinking might be something you already know and maybe is not important for what you need to do, but I would like to tell you my thoughts all the same. Somewhere a little more comfortable than this, I think.”

 

            North serves them mint tea in large, heavy, plain mugs. “I should know where everything is in my house,” he says, “alas, I am now discovering I only know where the workroom dishes are.”

            Pitch rolls his eyes, which North easily ignores.

            “Now. Let me get a few things straight. You want to free the moonpool water because it is the source of magic in the land.”

            Sandy nods. “Without the moonpool water I can only see things getting worse. Duller, more faded. The things that everyone will do to try to fight it—I can see either a rejection of magic entirely or an intense greed for it developing, and, well, you know the kinds of laws the king has passed. There’s no way the dreams I send can maintain the land and all the people in it. I’m not the source they need.”

            “And doing so will bring back adepts?”

            Pitch and Sandy look at each other. “I…don’t see how there could be more light and shadow adepts without it,” Sandy says. “But it’s only a hope. After all, when there were many light adepts, we found apprentices all over the kingdom, and even from other lands. I’m not sure the relation is that simple.”

            “I wonder if maybe it is,” North says, standing. “So. There is battle between you two, highly troubling for whole city. Sandy, you told me that you saw Meray, and water adepts, not too long afterward. And then ten years later, no new apprentices are found. And now, moonpools have some sort of water working in them, very old, connected by tunnels just as old. A working that must erase the virtue from the water before it reaches the wells.

            “If the king then was like our king now, then Nightmare War might have made magic of any kind seem too dangerous. So, what to do? Stop the magic at its source, in secret. Only water adepts could do it, since light and shadow rely on water too—a puzzle for another time, I think—and so: Dimming.” He spreads his arms, as if to display the chain of knowledge in all its links.

            “So the Dimming _is_ my fault,” Pitch says hollowly.

            “It most certainly is not!” Sandy exclaims. “What about the apprentices who weren’t from the city? What about—the king couldn’t have known that the moonpools were the source! Nobody knew! Nobody _could_ know. And how could the Dimming be your fault? Everyone saw me defeat you! And still they were so scared they decided to kill…an entire way of life. Augh. Not they, _he_. But still, he couldn’t have known, not after Zalla!”

            “Don’t you remember the custom, Sandy? All visitors to the City of the Moon drink from the Great Moon Fountain. It probably only takes one small drink in a lifetime for those chosen. And…oh, dawn, do you remember, the tenpenny souvenir bottles, “lucky water” they said.” Pitch anxiously tugs on his fingers to crack the knuckles. “And the king could have known. He didn’t need Zalla’s book to explain everything. He could have seen the _Chronicle of the Adepts_ and guessed, like we did first. He didn’t need to know for sure to execute his plan.”

            “He…” Sandy’s face falls. “He never did know for sure,” Sandy says, slumping in his chair. “That king, Arcus III…he died just before the Spring Equinox the year no new apprentices were found. A sudden illness. It killed him and a few other high-ranking officials. I had forgotten about that—the succession was smooth, and it didn’t seem nearly as important as the lack of apprentices that followed. The only effect it seemed to have then was for Arcus IV to finally approve various improvements for the city’s sewers.

            “But a cleaner water supply wouldn’t have saved them. Zalla’s working killed them, because once they saw that there weren’t any light apprentices they would have known for sure that the moonpools were the source.”

            “Who is Zalla?” North asks, and Pitch and Sandy look at each other.

            “I’ll…try to explain later,” Sandy says. “But Pitch, I just thought of something. If Arcus III and the others died because they were close to discovering the secret, then why are we still alive? And…” He glances at North, who seems as healthy as ever, his brows drawn together in concentration as he listens to their conversation.

            “I have two guesses,” says Pitch. “Whether either is right or not, we will probably never know. The first is that we are still alive because we are immortal. Even Zalla’s working can’t override the power of the moonpools. The second is that Zalla built something into her working so that it wouldn’t harm light or shadow adepts. Obviously, she wouldn’t have been able to write that down. As for others…well, after we read it, the book didn’t fade for you. Her working’s been broken. All the knowledge she hid for Mannius is probably safe to know now.”

            “Probably.” Sandy nods, and leans back with a sigh. “Well. There’s that. Another king who couldn’t face the existence of power outside his own. I…there’s something here to work out, a unifying thread, not just in the kings but in the adepts as well…”

            “Isn’t it more urgent to open moonpools as soon as possible?” North asks.

            Pitch nods. “We can figure out what this means once the land isn’t starving for magic. It’ll be easier to do so then, anyway. When everything doesn’t feel half-smeared to gray.”

            Sandy sits up straighter. “But what we don’t know—Pitch, throughout our entire lives our actions have led to consequences far greater than we understood. And none of it was on purpose! Now, we’ll be acting purposefully to affect how magic reaches the land—how can we act without knowing everything about what we do?”

            “Because that’s how people always act,” Pitch says. “There’s always something hidden, something unknown. We know enough. We guess enough. There’s a water working keeping the source from the people who need it. The only water adept for thousands of miles is being held in the palace. We probably need him to solve at least part of this problem.”

            Sandy nods slowly, but his expression is troubled, and Pitch catches the strong feeling of a new secret being kept. He’s about to ask about it, when someone knocks on the door to the sitting room.

            “What is it?” North calls, and Pitch gets up and moves to a shaded corner of the room and fades into the background—remembering to bring his tea this time.

            “Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. St. North,” a voice says from just outside the door, “but the work-end paper just arrived and there’s some things in it about Mr. Frost. It seems urgent.”

            North opens the door and a maid hands him the paper. He thanks her and she goes off, though not before casting a skeptical look at the rustic dishes invading the main house.

            Scanning the headlines, North frowns deeply and mutters something under his breath.

            “North?” Sandy asks, getting up and moving closer to him.

            “Impressive, those propagandists,” North says as if to himself, “I should hire them to build me a perpetual motion machine. Look.” He turns the paper around so Sandy and Pitch can read it.

            CROWD CALLS FOR FROST’S EXECUTION, the first headline screams. KING SAYS ‘FAIR TRIAL FIRST’, reads the smaller text beneath it.

            “No!” says Sandy.

            “What crowd?” asks Pitch.

            North looks to Sandy. “Unfortunately, my friend, the paper says that the crowd calling for Jack’s death was mainly people who had been given light to drink recently and want the harshest punishments to fall on those who, as they have been told, were working to kill you.”

            Sandy takes a deep, shaky breath. “This isn’t how I expected my actions to turn against me. All right. Having less information won’t help us. We need to read everything the paper has to say about this situation and then…act. And be ready to react. I won’t have Jack swept away in the kind of farce trials become when magic’s involved.”

 

            “‘A special hearing will be held at once to determine under what terms a trial may be conducted’,” Sandy reads aloud from the article as they eat a late dinner. Sandy has barely touched his food; even gathering the light of sunset hadn’t managed to calm him. Statements taken from the crowd clamor in his mind, hateful things, many of them, calling for the end of all magic that isn’t his. He had meant to give them peace of mind! Even the thought that they had been incited to say such things by the reporters interviewing them doesn’t help, for that still means someone wants such sentiments expressed. “‘If the hearing determines a trial is possible, the king has pledged to allocate a judge and venue as soon as they are available, given the magnitude of this situation and its special importance to all people in the Lunar Kingdom.’ How soon will that be?”

            “If king is one behind all this, probably tomorrow or day after,” North says.

            “And the trial would probably go quite quickly after that,” Pitch remarks. “Now, as we make our plan, I’d like to state for the record that I’d prefer not to gate-crash another well-publicized execution.”

            “Yes, well, I’d like to rescue Jack before it came to that point as well,” Sandy says. “I’m worried about what he might do in the emotional state a…well, death sentence would bring on. I think there’s a chance that he might accidentally harm someone, and then…then he might really need a fair trial. But he still wouldn’t get one.”

            “Jack will be well-guarded,” North reminds them. “ _Very_ well-guarded.”

            “We do know how to sneak into the Dream Cloisters,” Sandy says. “Can we—that is, Pitch, could you get into the palace and get him out through the tunnels?”

            Pitch narrows his eyes and looks off into the corner of the room. “It would require me to bring to bear an amount of power I have not used in centuries. Since Jack’s been accused of working with me, the palace guards, and specifically Jack’s guards, will be looking for me if they have been told the same story as the papers, which seems likely. And then, to actually release Jack and bring him out safely, I would need to hide both of us from, again, all the many people who have specifically been asked to guard him.” Pitch turns his gaze back to Sandy and North. “I could do it, but given the magic-starved nature of this land, both Jack and I in one place would be impossible to ignore, even if those noticing us would be unable to see us. Once Jack disappeared in such a way, I would be the only suspect. Sandy. I believe that might make any possible restoration far more complicated that it already will be.”

            “You know the kinds of things I’ve done,” Sandy says. “And your power must be equal to mine. You could hide yourself and Jack entirely from the entire city, if you were properly prepared.”

            “But I would have to explain what I did, eventually.” He picks up his half-empty glass of wine and looks into it, but does not drink. “I don’t want for the people of this city, this kingdom, to have to face the knowledge that the Nightmare King can and will invade their minds if he thinks his purpose is sound.”

            “It is a frightening thought,” North admits after a short silence.

            “But my dreams…” Sandy says.

            “Are safe. You, they think they know.”

            “Maybe they do know all our magics too well.” Sandy drums his fingers against the table. “Light. Shadow. Ice. But, all right, there is this that we know and they don’t: light and shadow magic stem from the same source. This means that much of what they do must be the same. And so while if a shadow adept hides something, that they will expect, but if a light adept hides something, they won’t expect that at all.”

            “How would a light adept hide something, though?” Pitch asks, leaning forward.

            Sandy smiles. “It wouldn’t be as effective as what you can do, but I think a light adept would hide something by making everyone look at something else.”

            North nods slowly, followed by Pitch. “Yes,” he says, “yes, that could help. Depending on what the guards were looking at, I could use less power, make my involvement less obvious. But what are you going to get them to look at? It would have to be something pretty impossible to ignore to distract them as much as needed. And are you planning on doing this yourself? They _will_ recognize light magic, there’s no doubt about that.”

            “Yes, that’s true. What we need is a distraction that absolutely cannot be ignored, but also cannot be linked immediately to any magic you, I, or Jack can do.”

            “Did you have something in mind?” North asks.

            Sandy catches Pitch’s eyes. “Only if Pitch thinks it’s all right to bring in another person.

            “If necessary, I would accept this.”

            “Good,” Sandy says. He turns to North. “Now, if I may be bold enough to ask, do you know Director Toothiana well enough to invite her here outside of a party?”

            To his surprise, North fusses for a moment or two before answering, making his fork and knife perfectly parallel to each other, folding his napkin, straightening his cravat. “I certainly hope so,” he says, finally. “But I have never asked.”

            “Well,” Pitch says, glancing at Sandy from the corners of his eyes, “I do believe you will be getting to know each other even better quite soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like there's bound to be something I overlooked in the who-knew-what-when matrix/grid in my mind, so if you notice something off or have questions, please comment (and if you have nice things to say, of course comment as well).


	19. The Required Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toothiana arrives at North's house; Pitch and Sandy explain the distraction they need; Toothiana tells Sandy why she is afraid.

 

            “You’re only making the whole situation more difficult by being so nervous,” Sandy chides Pitch as they sit near a window overlooking the main drive, waiting for Toothiana’s carriage.

            “I can’t exactly drink a decanter of late-afternoon sunlight to calm myself,” Pitch replies, rubbing the velvet nap of the open curtains back and forth between his fingers. “There’s too much that can go wrong here. Toothiana still thinks I burglarized her library. She probably won’t want North to know about her being a fire adept, and by probably I mean most assuredly. There’s nothing even close to a guarantee that she’ll want to aid us or even that she’s capable of what you plan to ask of her.”

            “Jack’s trial begins in two days,” Sandy says. “We have a little time, and so we ought to use it. I think Toothiana will want to help us as soon as we explain to her about the moonpools. Anyway, she and North _will_ be able to calm themselves with a little late-afternoon sunlight.”

            “This isn’t the same as—” Pitch drops the curtain. “But then, you have seen that light work in situations more serious than jittery students waiting for visits from their families.”

            Sandy nods. “I don’t know what the interaction will be between Toothiana’s magic and the light, however,” he admits. “But I’m taking what seems to be the best course of action other than inaction, anyway.” He smiles at Pitch. “I should hope you’d be pleased.”

            There’s worry behind his golden eyes, and again Pitch feels the brush of a well-kept secret against his mind. _What is it?_ The question ricochets through Pitch’s mind like a glass bead tossed on a wood floor. Sandy hadn’t ever hidden anything from him before. Not mentioned, yes, but hidden? What would Sandy hide from him? Things he thought might hurt him. And what would hurt him? Really hurt him?

            Whatever hurt Sandy.

            If what Sandy was hiding wasn’t that, then he needed to know so that he could prepare and Sandy didn’t have to face the unaccustomed burden of a secret on his own. If it was that, then he needed to know so he could prepare to prevent it. And maybe Sandy was mistaken if he thought it was that. After all, only Pitch could put him in true danger, and he never would.

            He had just started to think of how best to phrase the question when a flicker of movement outside catches both his and Sandy’s attention—a cab making its way up the drive.

            “That must be Toothiana,” Pitch says. “I ought to get ready. And, Sandy…I am glad you’re taking action. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about it.” A corner of his mouth twitches upward. “Especially when there’s a good chance it could lead to a fireball being launched at my head.” _Especially when you have a secret._

 

            The afternoon sunlight that Sandy offers North and Toothiana helps her reveal herself as a fire adept and him to accept her as one with relative calm, though after they pass through that revelation Sandy guesses that it’s not just the sunlight that’s fostering the trust between them. He hopes they both realize this, but he’s certainly not about to comment on it, even if he suspects their connection does make the introduction of Pitch go more smoothly. Sandy and Pitch explain the things they’ve learned about the nature of light and shadow magic, as well as their discovery of many of the stolen books in the Dream Cloisters.

            “And all this because the king is afraid of magic,” she says, frowning into her teacup. Her green glasses rest on the table, and when she looks up at the others, her red eyes seem to be alight with a new glow. “But why bring me here? To warn me? I know what’s been happening with Frost, and I knew well before then that I could never reveal what I really am.”

            “If this land was as it should be, you would not need to hide,” Sandy says.

            “If Jack is executed, people will be even more starved for magic than they are now,” Pitch points out. “Enough of the people who have spent time around Jack will spend time around you to notice that being around you helps them in the same way that Jack did. You may not be able to keep your secret indefinitely.”

            “So, what then?” Toothiana places her hands on the arms of her chair and sits up straighter. “Am I to leave this city for my own safety? This is my home. Sandy…I’ve dreamed the dreams you sent like everyone else. I may not be a Selenean by blood, but….Anyway, how can I let the book theft stand, now that I know where the books are? I will neither leave a gutted library, nor will I continue to direct it while it is incomplete. I’m responsible for guarding the knowledge of the Lunar Kingdom, and I _will_ get those books back.”

            “Those books will be no good without readers,” Pitch says. “And there will be no new readers of those texts without the release of the moonpool water.”

            “And to do that, we’re going to need to help Jack. We need to rescue him, not only because he’s innocent of the crimes he’s accused of, but also because he’s the only one with water magic in the city, and water magic is what’s holding the moonpool water back now,” Sandy explains.

            “Again, though, why have you brought me here? I can’t do anything with water, and if you’re not trying to get the books back now, and you’re not giving me a warning…”

            “Well, you _should_ know how much the current king fears magic,” Pitch says.

            “Toothiana, we, or rather, I, asked you here because we need your help,” Sandy says. “We need to free Jack before his trial. Pitch can get him out of the palace, but since the guards are on the lookout for him, they’ll know it was him, even if they aren’t able to see or touch him, unless there’s a distraction. And I would like there to be a distraction, so that between the rescue and the release of the moonpool water, public opinion won’t turn any further against Pitch.”

            “And you can’t distract them?” Toothiana narrows her eyes. “You have powers most adepts can’t even dream of.”

            “Legend,” says Sandy.

            “No, it’s true,” says Pitch. “But the problem is this: everyone in the city is familiar with light-magic. And if public opinion turns against Sandy for being involved in Jack’s escape, healing this land will be far harder than it’s already going to be.”

            “We need you to provide the distraction,” Sandy says.

            Toothiana closes her eyes and places one hand on her glasses, but she does not pick them up. “What, precisely, are you asking of me? And why? And please…please be clear when you explain.”

            “We need a distraction that’s impossible to ignore,” Sandy begins, and Toothiana opens her eyes to watch him as he explains. “And we need a distraction we can control, that’s not linked to light or shadow magic. It’s my hope that a fire, created by your magic, would make all this possible. And, unlike a non-magical fire…it’s also my hope that you would be able to make sure no one was killed.”

            Toothiana frowns again, and starts tapping her foot rapidly. “And why would I risk this?”

            “Because you shouldn’t have to hide,” Sandy says. “Because even though you weren’t born a Selenean, you care about this land. Because doing this will be one more step towards curing the disease that led to the books from the library being stolen in the first place. Because I think you can do it, and because I think it is in your nature to be able to do something like this.”

            “For the nature of fire is change,” she says quietly. “And what you want to do would change the Lunar Kingdom.” She glances at North.

            “Can you do this?” he asks. “It is very important for the adepts. For the whole kingdom.”

            _For you?_ She’s not sure if she wants him to say it or not, but whether he says it or not, he’s looking at her with nothing but admiration. He’s never mocked the order that she loves as a librarian, and he didn’t say anything about her being a danger as a fire adept in the library. But what Sandy’s asking her to do…

            “Sandy,” she says, her foot still tapping, “may I speak with you, alone?”

            Sandy nods. “But if what you say pertains to our safety, I won’t keep it a secret.”

            “That’s fine. Fine. I just need to talk to an adept.”

            Sandy looks towards Pitch apologetically, but Pitch waves him on. “I’m not bothered,” he says, his words lighter than his expression. “I’m glad to see my manner remains forbidding.”

 

            Sandy waits patiently in a chair in a nearby room while Toothiana paces in a small square before him, her long skirts leaving a scalloped pattern in the thick rug.

            “I think—think! I might be able to make a fire like the one you need. But,” she shakes her head, “but it will be difficult. I’ll need…I’ll need access to a big bonfire, somewhere, while creating the distraction. The one will help me control the other. But it’s not the creating and controlling of the fire that’s the problem, it’s the making of it so that it won’t hurt anyone.”

            “With detailed enough plans of the palace, maybe…” Sandy begins, not certain what he’s going to suggest. Without magical intervention, a fire of the size they need _will_ hurt or kill people.

            Toothiana stops pacing and takes a huge breath. “I know the theory of it.” She sits down in the chair next to Sandy. “To make fire look dangerous, and feel dangerous, but not actually _be_ dangerous, is to change the nature of fire.” Her foot starts tapping again, and she begins to play complicated patterns on her fingers with her thumbs. “The nature of fire magic is change. Therefore, changing the nature of fire is well within the power of a fire adept. But to change the fundamental nature of our element changes our own fundamental selves, as well. It’s how…” she stills. “It’s part of how fire apprentices prove themselves as fire adepts.”

            “A path you did not choose,” says Sandy.

            Toothiana nods. “I was—I am—afraid. For you see, we can change the nature of fire, but only to a certain extent. No matter what, fire is change. Those who become fire adepts walk through fire to do so. And when they pass through the flames, they are changed. A fire adept has no relation to the fire apprentice. At least, that’s what we’re told to prepare for. I saw different things happen. Losing parts of the memory was common. So was personality change. Their bodies would change too. For some fire adepts, only other fire adepts can bear the heat of their touch. For others, only other fire adepts can tell that they’re human.” She smooths down her skirts. “I didn’t walk through fire because I didn’t want to change suddenly like that. I wanted to be the person I had grown to be, even if that meant that the final mysteries of fire remained beyond me.” She looks away from Sandy and chews on her lower lip. “If I create the fire you ask for, even if I don’t walk through it…the sheer scale…it’ll change me, Sandy. I’ll be doing everything apprentices do to become adepts, but while I’m separated from other fire adepts by thousands of miles.” She takes a deep breath.  “And the more I control the fire in the palace, the more fire will work uncontrolled in me.”

            “So you are refusing?” Sandy asks quietly. “I understand.” He looks down, frowning. “At least Pitch and I are the only light and shadow adepts we have to worry about if something goes wrong.”

            “I’m—I’m not refusing,” Toothiana says, her voice shaking. “I just wanted you to know that I’m afraid, and why I’m afraid. That this isn’t some routine magic for me. I may…I may not change as much as I fear. I could never see a pattern in how the other adepts changed. But I wanted to let you know what could happen so you could explain to North if I do change…enough to not be able to do it myself.”

            “I will,” Sandy says. “Toothiana, I don’t know how to express how grateful I am that you’re willing to try to help. You’ll be helping put right something that’s been wrong for fifteen hundred years. At the very least.”

            Toothiana looks at him closely. “Whatever you’re planning on doing, it’s not routine magic for you either.”

            Sandy opens his mouth, closes it, wets his lips, and only then begins to speak. “The last time change as great as this was wrought, a light adept died. At the hands of a shadow adept. To undo what has been done…Pitch and I have no guides.”

            “Does it make a difference, that you have lived so long?” Toothiana asks.

            “It should, shouldn’t it?” Sandy doesn’t know what to explain, what to say. _During the Dimming I had to live for others. I haven’t been able to live a full life with Pitch. I spent 384 years on my island preparing and maintaining for a life that looks so close now, but might never be for me. I wanted to die once but I don’t feel like that now._ “It doesn’t,” he says softly.

            “And do…the others know what you think might be necessary?”

            “No,” Sandy says. “Not yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone else read Chalice by Robin McKinley? I kind of have the idea that some fire adepts are like the fire priests in that book. Incidentally, the possible outcomes that can occur when a fire apprentice becomes a fire adept is why the fire adepts do not insist that every apprentice become an adept.


	20. The Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy, Pitch, North, and Tooth combine their efforts to rescue Jack from the palace. The objective is gained, but the plan is not exactly followed, and there are some unforseen consequences.

            Pitch glances down at the pocket watch North’s lent him for this night. It’s large in the palm of his hand, black numbers on white enamel made meaningful by black hour and minute hands. The plain steel case is smooth and cool, holding no marks to indicate where it’s from. Pitch had made a point of asking for that specification. If something went wrong—well, Pitch would always be the Nightmare King. Appearing and disappearing from nowhere, to nowhere, with no allies to implicate. In the tunnels, the watch’s ticking echoes through the ancient brick. Even alone, he’s tempted to muffle it.

            Fifteen minutes remain before he’s meant to enter the Dream Cloisters. The thick, heavy, sweet-valerian taste of indoor 3 am darkness lingers at the back of his throat. He takes a deep breath, feeling the power quiescent under his skin and all around him, the darkness of the tunnel enhancing the properties of the shadow he drank in preparation. _Good_ , he thinks. He must allow himself to be pure shadow for this plan to work—even if not perfectly.

            He wonders if he’ll even notice if Toothiana’s succeeded in creating the fire they need, so focused does he plan to be.

 

            “Thank you for your help,” Toothiana says to the several members of North’s staff that have aided her in placing the wood that will fuel the fire here, her power, and thus the second fire in the palace. None of them know that, however. North had told them this was “an efficiency experiment”. It was plausible enough with North’s eccentricities, thank goodness. She shivers in a breeze that’s rapidly chilled with the setting of the sun, and presses the backs of her hands to her cheeks. All her skin is cold. She wonders if this might be the last time that it is.

            “Now I think you had all better go inside for safety.”

            “Will you be safe, though, Director ma’am?” Toothiana doesn’t know what the young man asking does every day, but at North’s latest party she had seen him taking coats.

            “I’ll be fine,” she says, with all the assurance, but none of the sincerity, that she uses—used?—to talk to her pages. “Before I was a Director I had experience in such things.”

            Once she’s sure that no one’s going to stay behind and try to offer misguided help, she hurries around the piles of wood, checking to make sure no beams have fallen out of the First Transformative Alignment, the only one she remembers with enough confidence to build it on such a large scale, and one that was never meant to be used in a working of such magnitude.

            She runs the edges of her sleeves between her fingers. She hadn’t been wearing her Director’s uniform when she arrived at North’s yesterday, and there hadn’t been any time to go and get it from her house. She wishes she had it now, though, even though it would be burned from her body during the working. It would be something to give her confidence in her place in the city and in herself, something she desperately longs for as she looks at the burn piles before her, their shapes bringing back memories that make the fire magic within her crackle with joy, and fears that make her heart quail. She must face them both if she is to have any chance of succeeding.

            She puts on the heavy and voluminous asbestos robe North lent her. Once it’s fastened, she removes her clothes and carries them to a distance she thinks will be safe from the flames. After this is over, if she can still wear ordinary fabrics, she’ll need them. And unlike her Director’s uniform, they don’t affect her confidence one way or another.

            The plain pocket watch in her hand ticks toward its own destruction, while the gas lamps lining North’s drive flare up with the setting of the sun. Fifteen minutes to go.

 

            North glances from his watch to the low clouds hanging over the city, waiting for the reflection of flames. By the clock he and Sandy have fifteen more minutes to wait, but at this late stage he knows well that they have to be prepared for their plan to change, no matter how precisely it began. He wraps the reins of the carriage horses around a post and frowns out at the Old Green Market, now emptied for the evening.

            “I am still not liking this location,” he says softly to Sandy. “The militia looks for people in empty markets at night.”

            “But not for _us_ ,” Sandy replies. On the back of North’s coat, the hides of the horses, and the sides of the carriage itself, barely-visible words in Erebusian refuse to hold the eye. They say something like “completely uninteresting”.

            “Do you trust Pitch’s working?” North asks.

            “I know he did the best he could when all his attention must be drawn elsewhere,” Sandy says. “As far as I can tell the magic still feels active. But I have a…different…reaction to shadow magic than most people.”

            “Hmm.” North folds his arms. “I only hope the shadows do not dull the horses’ speed.”

            Sandy gives him a small smile. “You know he couldn’t have hidden your autocarriage. Not with everything else he’s doing.”

            “He could not hide _you_ , either,” North points out.

            Sandy’s smile drops away. “I’m aware.” He takes a long, slow breath. “If there’s trouble I will draw it to myself. Take Jack and Pitch back to your house. I’ll meet you there when I can.”

            “You are that confident you will avoid capture?”

            “No physical bond can hold a light adept,” Sandy says, then amends: “At least, no physical bond can hold _me_. I’d rather they not know this, but…” He shrugs.

            “No going before the king to explain, eh?” North asks.

            Sandy shakes his head quickly. “It would take too long. The fall equinox is in a week. The time will be ripe for opening the moonpools then. I’ll need all the time I can to prepare.”

            “Why not wait a year?”

            “The situation in the Lunar Kingdom is failing faster now than ever,” Sandy says. “Maybe because of Jack—not through his fault, of course. We’re a danger to the world like this. And a year can change so much. A minute can change so much. I can’t ignore that anymore.” He pauses for a long moment, while thin fog begins to gather around them. “And I don’t want to lose courage.”

 

            Toothiana cups her palms together in front of her heart. She breathes in, breathes out. Again. Again. She has been so long away from the heartflame pits. The flint and tinder in the pocket of the robe feel heavier than they have any right to.

            Breathe in. Breathe out.

            Sandy gathers light centuries after his last taste of his source. Pitch does the same with shadow.

            Breathe in. Breathe out.

            With every breath she brings the radiant magic within her skin closer to her heart. Ten years of ignored hearthfires draw together, ten years of bonfires at the solstices. Fires her mind ignored but her magic basked in. And why should it have not? When she first put on her green glasses, when she slept only four hours a night learning everything about the Great Library as a page, determined to become Director someday, she had not suppressed her fire, not really. She had changed herself, with intentions just as permanent as her long-distant fellow apprentices returning from their journeys to light their adept fires. She had been banked, not extinguished.

            In a stillness she has not known since the Empire, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, her palms fill with flame, a poppy-shaming, ruby-shaming red.

            Warmth from the words of fire spreads from her mouth and throat through her body even to the tips of her toes. She leans forward and places her handfuls of fire in the center of the Arrangement.

            All too quickly, the flames rush along their intended paths, and Toothiana pushes dozens upon dozens of words she hadn’t known she remembered past her lips, struggling to keep control of the fire and remind it of its purpose.

            It crackles back at her with the laughter of an old, daring friend, and she remembers one of her first lessons: The magic will only be complete when the Arrangement, when whatever is to be burned, is burned completely.

            She must reserve no part of her mind and no part of her self if she wants to succeed in this working.

            The flames grow higher and the words fall yet smoother from her mouth as she unclasps the first fastening on the asbestos robe.

 

            Pitch doesn’t need to check his watch to know when the moment’s finally arrived. The rush of unfamiliar magic breaks into his waiting like a loud cry, and he runs toward the stairs to the Dream Cloisters at once. The amount of wood Toothiana had asked for was considerable, but even in an ordinary fire it wouldn’t burn indefinitely. When burning by magical fire, she had explained, it might burn for an hour, if the flames were calm.

            Pitch doubts the flames will be calm.

            The Dream Cloisters are empty of guards, so he sprints across the courtyard and out past the walls, stopping only at the gate to check for any human presence beyond. In the garden, Pitch sees no one—no doubt due to the wall of flames twice his height running along its edge. Pitch shields his face with his sleeve as he runs across the garden, while he holds the other loosely over his mouth. The flames are where they all agreed they should be, but now, as he feels the blistering heat and watches dwarf trees and hefty shrubbery blacken and fall, Pitch isn’t about to risk anything on the success of Toothiana’s working to make fire safe.

            The door he needs has been left ajar, no doubt due to someone fleeing the sudden fire, and Pitch gathers the shadow magic that hides him more closely around himself before slipping through. Once inside, he hears shouting from several rooms away, but the hallway before him is clear all the way through to the grander entryway at the other end. He sprints down the center of the hall, as the only way anyone in this building would detect him is if he ran headlong into them. Despite this precaution, he’s almost surprised by a frantic-looking maid holding a half-full bucket of water skidding into the main hall from a side passage, but his feet nimbly move him out of her way, almost even before his conscious mind registers that she’s there.

            Outside, the central building of the palace looms. The shining white stone of the walls, heavily adorned with carvings of guarding moonbeasts where they form corners and meet the copper roof, reflect the fire ominously. Between him and that pile that holds Jack within some secret, rotten heart, a wide courtyard spreads, filled with nobles and their far more numerous servants milling about nervously.

            It’s quite the crowd, and probably includes everyone not directly involved in fighting the fire.

            Well, almost everyone. There’s no sign of the king, and far fewer militia members and guards than a palace of this size would require. Certainly, many of them might be fighting the fire, but no doubt others remain inside, to make sure no one takes advantage of the chaos.

            _Top marks for effort_ , Pitch thinks as he edges around the sides of the courtyard farthest from the fire. _Too bad I’m not trying to just slip off with a few silver spoons._

            The grand receiving hall beyond the courtyard is empty, and would have echoed with Pitch’s footfalls had he allowed them to sound. Unlike in the other building, Pitch sticks to the edges and shadows of this room, knowing that anyone remaining inside here is likely to be on high alert. He casts his mind out for anything hidden, and, with what he senses and his general knowledge of palaces, he soon finds a concealed door leading to narrow servants’ hallways.

            Too narrow. He’s not well-versed enough in the specific running of the king’s household to know who might use these passages in a fire. Unseen, he would all too easily be walked into and discovered, thus causing the exact problem the fire was meant to solve. He slinks away from the servants’ passage towards a much grander door set across from the entrance, muttering a few words to extinguish the still-burning gas lamps in the chandelier overhead. As long as he’s alone, he might as well. The new shadows ease the strain on his working, allowing him more energy with which to make the opening of the door seem uninteresting to anyone who might be on the other side. It’s a good idea, for as soon as he slips through an opening just wide enough for his thin frame, he spots two guards hurrying straight for the door. As in the other building, his feet carry him gracefully out of their way before he can form a plan to evade them, but even as he softly sighs in relief as neither guard so much as twitches in his direction, he can’t help but feel uneasy at how seamlessly natural the shadow working’s control over his body seems to be. He can trust it to hide him, certainly—but he doesn’t want to remain hidden forever.

            Such thoughts can’t be indulged now, however. Once the guards slam the door shut, leaving Pitch alone again, he puts out the lights in the hallway and strides forth, opening his mind to the secrets of the palace.

            Unsurprisingly, they’re everywhere around him, far denser than he’d allowed himself to sense when looking for the servants’ hallway. They overlay the structure of the walls like heavy black silk, obscuring the physical palace. None of them feel particularly new, though they are thicker ahead of him. He heads off down the hall, shaking his head to close his mind to the secrets once again. If Jack’s location isn’t enough of a secret to stand out to him, he’ll have to try a second option. He retrieves a small piece of paper from a pocket of his jacket, but doesn’t stop to glance at it till he reaches a fork in the hallway. On it, in shorthand Erebusian, are the most detailed instructions North could provide about the route he and the others took to Jack’s cell. They’d be more helpful if Pitch was starting from the same banquet hall, but it was too late for that now.

            The most important thing seems to be that he’s looking for somewhere old. Somewhere interior. He takes a deep breath and peeks at the secrets. To the left, he can hardly see anything at all. He brings back his ordinary sight and sprints to the next fork in the hallways. _This is not going to be the best way to run this maze_ , he thinks. Of course, the best way to run this or any maze would be with a sand-compass, but Pitch could no longer handle such a thing and Sandy’s magic would stand out like a beacon anyway.

            Following the trail of ever-weightier secrets and putting out lamps as he does so, Pitch makes his way in fits and starts ever deeper into the palace.

 

            As soon as North’s notes become useful, Pitch folds them up and returns them to his pocket. Tense guards walk up and down the bare stone hallway, their eyes darting this way and that. Their gazes pass over Pitch, as he knew they would. The real problem is going to be getting Jack out of his cell.

            Pitch weaves between the guards in the hallway to a door he’s fairly sure belongs to the room where Jack is being kept, since it has two guards standing to either side of it. He allows himself quick glances into their faces to gauge their moods before pressing himself back against the door, out of their direct lines of sight. Like the others, they’re tense, but they also seem preoccupied. That should be good for Pitch, as long as the magic he uses to open the door without their noticing doesn’t raise their hackles.

            Shadow magic is supposed to be undetectable, but Pitch is all too well aware that he learned that when magic lay thick on the ground everywhere. Jack’s presence might be able to cover things up, but, well, counting on an imprisoned and untrained magic user for anything is something he’d rather leave to Sandy.

            He sketches words of Erebusian in the air, not daring to begin with whispers, even whispers in Erebusian, for fear that sound might draw the guards attention through his shadows as his visual presence had not. He signs the unimportance of the door, its utter insignificance, how it really shouldn’t be guarded at all, how there’s been no sign of anything changing about it for so long. One guard glances away down the hallway Pitch came from, and the other soon copies him. Pitch nods and allows himself a small smile. _Yes, what’s going on outside, upstairs, is so much more interesting, so much more dynamic, so much more suited to your training than anything down here._

            Pitch keeps signing with one hand while getting his lock picks out of his pocket with the other. He might not be able to open the door quite yet, but he can certainly unlock it. Pitch kneels before the lock and starts softly whispering in Erebusian, since he’ll need both hands for this. The guards keep fidgeting and looking up and down the hall, but never at the door. Pitch’s shoulders relax slightly and he slides one pick into the lock. Good. His shadows have held.

            With that thought he feels a press of familiar yet alien amusement on his mind, what must be Shadow itself as he hasn’t felt it since he was chosen. It feels like it’s asking him how he could think it would ever abandon him. Pitch grits his teeth and focuses once more on the lock. Now’s not the time to have an argument with the power he’s relying on to complete his mission.

            The lock is heavy and complex, but also very old, and Pitch has the advantage of familiarity with the design. He’s taken care of two pins when he hears something that’s going to make his and Jack’s escape much more difficult than it needs to be.

            “I can help,” Jack calls from inside the cell. “Please, just let me out!”

            Pitch would have liked to spare a moment to swear under his breath as the attention of the guards snaps back towards the cell. Instead, he calls up yet more shadow magic to make sure the guards don’t notice the lock picks sticking out of the keyhole or the hand that’s holding onto them.

            “No can do, sonny,” one of the guards calls back. “You know you’re more dangerous than that fire.”

            “Not right now I’m not!” Jack pleads. “I could stop it! It would help everyone!”

            The guard knows he’s right and as his expression softens, Pitch takes his uncertainty and confusion and magnifies them a hundredfold. What that will make the guards do, he’s not sure, but at least the one who spoke won’t be likely to be focusing on the door. Immediately afterward, he presses his hands flat against the door and throws the strongest spell he knows for silence into the room, intending to fill it from floor to ceiling. It’s not a particularly _nice_ spell—Pitch knows from personal experience that it feels like drowning—but he’s not about to have the person he’s rescuing mess up his mission.

            He assumes it’s worked, because he hears nothing more from Jack as he applies himself once more to the lock.

            “Why are we down here?” One guard asks the other.

            “We’re here to make sure Jack Frost’s secure?”

            “But he’s secure now, right?”

            “I guess…”

            “Shouldn’t we be upstairs?”

            “I mean, maybe. I think so. Because…because of the fire! That’s why Haver and Jol aren’t here.”

            “Yes, exactly,” Pitch mutters in the midst of his litany about how dull locks are.

            “How could we have forgotten that! Obviously they need every man!”

            “Could it be the smoke?” The younger of the two guards asks, sounding fearful.

            “No doubt! There’s no telling what happens when the fancy stuff catches. Good thinking, Ulin. They’ll need as many clear-headed people as possible. Come on. Get the others. We may be the only ones who can help at this point.”

            The guards rush off and Pitch shakes his head. That worked far better than anything he had _planned_ to do. As soon as the guards are gone, he puts out the lights. With more shadow, and less to focus on, the lock is open in moments.

            Inside, Jack thrashes on the floor, under the impression that he can’t breathe and therefore cannot speak. Pitch kneels beside him, placing one hand firmly over his mouth and another on his sternum. With a few hissed words, he immobilizes Jack but allows him to speak again.

            “Don’t scream or I’ll use the silence spell again,” he says. “I’m here to rescue you.”

            “What, so they’ll have a real reason to put me on trial when they find me?”

            “Would that make you feel better? I advise you not to object to being rescued. Sandy expects to see you soon, and I don’t like disappointing him. And you already know you don’t really like the feel of shadow magic.”

            “You’re just going to put everyone in more danger,” Jack says. “I know why I’m here. It’s because I risked going out alone. I could have lost control, and—hey! What are you doing?”

            Pitch gives him a withering look as he unbuttons Jack’s shirt. “I’m making you invisible. This is what a lack of a solid theoretical grounding leads to…well, I suppose not the _worst_ thing…” He takes a small metal jar out of his pocket, opens it, and dips his finger into the shadow within, blacker than the blackest ink. He uses it to draw a few words of Erebusian shorthand onto Jack’s sternum. “There. That should hold, as long as you don’t try to be seen. Don’t button your shirt. You might smear it. I’m going to let you move again, now.”

            Jack sits up, frowning at his open shirt. “You should have told me what you were going to do. It feels weird.”

            “I had planned to write the symbols on your forehead,” Pitch says, pulling him to his feet by his elbow. “But then it occurred to me that your brain isn’t the seat of your power. Now. Listen carefully. We are going to run out of here to a designated rendezvous point where Sandy and North will be waiting. This run will be made silently, and it will be made in the dark. You must stay close. That symbol on your chest—no.” Pitch shakes his head. “It needn’t be that complicated. Jack, you are going to hold my hand as we run.”

            “Why should I trust you?” Jack asks.

            Pitch frowns and stoops so he’s looking directly into Jack’s eyes. “Because I’ve never locked you up. Because I haven’t lied to you already, and you know the king has. Because I have nothing to gain from your death, and the king does.”

            Jack’s eyes open wide. “How? I mean…it’d be safer, but I thought, even now…”

            “Jack, you’re going to have to respond to this later,” Pitch says. “There’s no time.” He grabs his hand and pulls him towards the door. “At least trust me when I tell you that escaping won’t get you in any more trouble than you are already.” He turns to him and smiles a little. “If I’m wrong, I’ll take full blame for everything. It’ll be a refreshing link of cause and effect regarding my actions in this kingdom. Now, are you ready to run?”

            Jack gulps and clenches his jaw, but also nods.

            “Remember: silent. Quick. Following my lead.” Pitch reaches up a hand and with a flourish extinguishes the lamps.

 

            The escape goes well until they start to reach rooms and halls with exterior windows. The light from the fire still shines in, but it’s dimmer than before. From a few rooms away, Pitch hears people talking and moving about. The evacuation must be over. Jack yanks on his arm, and Pitch meets Jack’s frightened face with an expression kept carefully neutral, even though in this light it’s not as though the boy could read it.

            “What is it?” Pitch hisses. Belatedly, he realizes his hand and arm have gone numb with cold.

            “I’m losing control,” Jack whispers. “I can’t focus. I can’t hold onto the ice.”

            Pitch forces himself to take a deep breath. The ice. The one thing that, given Jack’s level of power, would be impossible to hide. And this was no time for a magic lesson. Still, needs must. “Jack, remember what you learned at Fountain Square. It’s not about control. The ice is you. If you don’t command it, it won’t act.”

            “But it’s all I can think about!”

            “Then we need to keep moving,” Pitch says. “You haven’t lost control yet.” He pointedly doesn’t look down at the edge of his sleeve near Jack’s hand or the floor under his feet, not wanting to see them rimed in frost. He pulls Jack forward. “You can freeze the tunnels solid as soon as we get to them.”

            As the voices from the entrance hall grow louder, though, Pitch can tell that promise hasn’t helped Jack. The boy’s leaving icy footprints behind, and his shoulder’s starting to stiffen up. He wonders uneasily if Jack’s actually freezing his blood the longer he holds his hand.

            What he needs is something that will stop Jack from thinking about ice. A fire just for his mind. But the only thing he has that might be shocking enough to distract a boy of the Lunar Kingdom wasn’t his alone to share. He tries to bend his elbow and receives only a sickening flash of pain. He’s not sure if his concealment spell can work under these conditions.

            Well, desperate times. “Sandy and I are not merely allies but lovers,” Pitch says quietly to Jack as they round the last corner to the once-again brightly lit entrance hall.

            “What was that?” Jack asks, and Pitch thanks the stars that everyone else in the hall is talking so loudly as they creep along the wall.

            “Lovers,” Pitch says again, noting with relief that Jack isn’t leaving frost footprints behind anymore.

            “Uh…do you mean that in the modern way or the old-fashioned way?”

            They’re no more than thirty steps from the entrance. Once they’re outside they can run, if the crowd in the entrance hall means the courtyard is empty.

            “As far as I know the usage of that word has not changed,” Pitch says. His arm’s still frozen. That won’t be good for running. “Would you like me to go into detail?”

            “Not…really…?” Jack’s face is the picture of confusion when Pitch glances back. Good. He pulls him out of the hall and down the steps.

            “Good.  It’s against my nature as a shadow adept and person to reveal such things.”

            “As a shadow adept,” Jack repeats. “Wait a minute, though. How…but I thought…”

            Pitch ignores Jack’s unformed questions and drags him into a jog. The dying fire doesn’t concern him as much now that they’re out of the palace, but the complete lack of feeling in his arm does. Losing it to frostbite wouldn’t threaten his life, so he doesn’t know if his immortality will do anything to preserve him. He wonders if, by sheer determination, he could force the limb to live. Sun and stars, he will touch Sandy with _two_ hands when they figure out how.

            He hisses at Jack to be quiet as they dash through the satellite building between them and the Dream Cloisters, but the building is even more deserted than before.

            Unfortunately, the Dream Cloisters aren’t.

            Lantern light spills from the entrance, flickering with movement from people inside. Pitch curses under his breath, but continues to approach with Jack in tow until they’re standing just at the edge of the light.

            From inside, Pitch can hear voices, not bothering to be quiet.

            “Is there any damage? Any at all? Remember, even the smallest singe on a page could have incomprehensible consequences.”

            Jack motions for Pitch’s attention. _The king_ , he mouths, and Pitch nods, his expression becoming stony. Petty it might be, but knowing all that he does about the king, at this moment he finds himself resenting how ordinary the man sounds.

            “Sire.” A different man’s voice now, and Jack narrows his eyes, but shrugs when Pitch looks at him questioningly. “The fire appears to have left this area entirely untouched.”

            _Too right_ , thinks Pitch. When Sandy had explained about the books hidden here, Toothiana had almost refused to light the fire at all.

            “However,” the voice continues, “I’m afraid I do have some bad news. A significant number of books appear to be…gone.”

            “You’re sure?”

            “They seem to have been taken away by the cartload.”

            A long pause. “Are the missing books those the Nightmare King was said to have stolen?”

            “Some of them, your majesty. Others, based on my observations from previous inspections, were those that had been in the inner palace library.”

            “And those were the truly dangerous ones. Blast it! If the Nightmare King was still in the city, he _would_ be our prime suspect. Who else would want them?”

            “If I may…Master Sandren might.”

            “Master Sandren might be becoming more difficult to control, Rach, but he’s still a light adept. While he might want them, he wouldn’t think that we were hiding them and he wouldn’t think of stealing them.”

            “Perhaps the Nightmare King is still in the city?”

            “Now _that_ is one piece of propaganda I hope does not turn out to be true.”

            “Well, we do know that the tunnels can be accessed accidentally, despite their secrecy. The theft need not have an extraordinary motive behind it.”

            “That is true enough. And yet…this all makes me very uneasy. Post guards at the tunnel entrance. I want a continuous watch until the theft is solved—we’ll need access to the tunnels till then. Afterwards, we can brick them up like we should have done after taking the books from the library.” A brief pause. “To think, Rach, that we wouldn’t have found out about this for weeks if it hadn’t been for the fire. Do you think they could be related in any way?”

            “I doubt it, your majesty. The fire, though fearsome, was too aimless to have been arson. Nothing of importance was damaged beyond repair, or so I’ve heard from the initial reports.”

            Rach continues speaking, but nothing more of significance to Pitch and Jack seems to be forthcoming. Pitch bends to whisper into Jack’s ear. “We have to change our plans. I won’t be able to get you past the tunnel guards with true secrecy, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if you froze them as we snuck by. You’ve snuck out before. Can you do it again?”

            Jack nods and reaches for Pitch’s hand again, but he pulls away. “No need. I can easily follow you in the dark.” Jack nods again, and after pausing for a brief moment with a thoughtful expression on his face, leads Pitch around the outside of the Dream Cloisters.

            It’s not long before they’re stepping out of a small postern door and into the city, free of the palace at last.

            “Now what?” whispers Jack, hoping fervently that whatever Pitch did to him to make him invisible is still working. Though the postern opens onto a less-famous street near the palace, the earlier fire means a significant number of gawkers still linger on the thoroughfare.

            “Now we meet up with Sandy and North.” The map of the service tunnels that Pitch had memorized won’t do him any good now, but he and Jack won’t need to wander around the city, even if Pitch hadn’t been able to become as familiar with it as he would have liked to when he was staying there openly.

            He beckons Jack into the shadows of a nearby alleyway. “I’m going to need a few moments to plan the route, and I won’t be able to help you stay invisible during that time. So unless you want to be captured again, stay still, stay calm, stay quiet, and hope that the remnants of the fire draw more attention than two magic users together in one place.” Which was likelier than Pitch knew he had made it sound, since the fire had been magical and intended to be distracting, but he didn’t want Jack taking any risks.

            Pitch settles himself cross-legged on the cobblestones, his movements awkward due to his still-unresponsive arm. Fortunately, what he’s about to do doesn’t require much movement. In fact, it really isn’t a shadow working at all. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “Sandy,” he whispers, as he’d whispered to himself all those centuries ago when shadow claimed him. With the name, the one bright pattern he can still read flickers to life in his mind: where Sandy is, and where Pitch is, and what he has to do to get to him. It’s not prophecy, and it’s not possibility, and for a long time Pitch had been wary of it, fearing that it was a shadow adept temptation to go and destroy the remaining light. Later, he’d avoided using this last, strange, bit of light within him for fear that it would be used up. Still, it had been the only way such a poor sailor as he had always been able to find his way unerringly to the Isle of Dreams. And now? Now, whatever else it means, it’s showing him the path to safety, or at least what’s always felt like safety.

            Pitch opens his eyes to realize his back is freezing, and turns to glare at Jack, huddling behind him.

            “People kept looking down the alley,” he whispers.

            “If you freeze me solid we won’t be able to get away before they start doing more than looking,” Pitch replies. “But thankfully you didn’t quite manage to do that.” He stands. “I trust that you don’t need me to physically guide you anymore.”

            “Are you…hurt?” Jack asks, looking both guilty and disbelieving.

            “It’s nothing that will slow me down,” Pitch says, maneuvering himself so that Jack can’t see how stiff and motionless his arm hangs.

           

            “Pitch!” Sandy breathes in surprise, as he emerges from a nearby alleyway, not from the booth with the tunnel as expected. “What happened? Where’s Jack?”

            “Here,” Pitch says, panting, and with a brief gesture Sandy’s not fighting to look at him anymore and Jack appears next to him, resting his hands on his knees and gasping for air.

            “Did you _run_ all the way here?” Sandy asks, stepping closer but holding the edges of his sleeves tightly.

            “Less time on the streets, less chance of being noticed,” Pitch says. He coughs and mutters a weak oath.

            “Then we should be getting off streets in general,” North interjects. He helps Jack into the carriage and then reaches out for Pitch’s arm to help him inside as well, grabbing his frozen arm by unlucky chance. Pitch hisses in pain at the movement of his shoulder.

            “Pitch! You’re hurt! What—” Sandy moves forward again, then backs up, nearly tearing holes in the edges of his sleeves.

            “It’s nothing,” Pitch says through gritted teeth. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

            “ _Would you mind repeating that?_ ” Sandy says in Shining.

            “Into carriage, now, both of you,” North interrupts. “No solutions are here.”

 

            “What happened?” Sandy asks again, as North’s carriage carries them back towards his mansion. Every jolt of the springs earns at least a grimace from Pitch.

            “Guards. Posted at the tunnel entrance in the Dream Cloisters. Jack was the one who got us out.”

            “I’m talking about your _arm_ , you obtuse old shadow!”

            “It’s my fault,” Jack says quietly. “I couldn’t control my power but to help me escape Pitch had to lead my by the hand and I froze his arm!”

            Sandy looks from one to the other, having no idea how to respond. The immediate rush of anger he feels towards Jack is certainly unhelpful and purposeless, just as is his anger toward Pitch.

            “It won’t kill me,” Pitch says.

            “Well it’s a bright midnight and a dark noon to find out what can injure you!”

            “I’m sorry,” Jack says miserably.

            “I never thought I was invulnerable,” Pitch says. “It’s you who discovered…”

            “I don’t want you to be careless with yourself,” Sandy says with a voice like steel. He glances towards Jack and Pitch groans.

            “By the way, Sandy, I told him that we’re lovers.”

            “Wha—why?”

            “Well, it’s true, damn it all!”

            Sandy takes a deep breath. “I’m asking _why_ because it seems rather unusual that you’d volunteer personal information that’s been kept secret for centuries to someone you’ve met precisely twice now.”

            “I needed to distract him and it was the only thing I could think of that I was sure would shock him.”

            “Did it work?” Sandy asks Jack.

            Jack nods, an embarrassed flush rising to his cheeks. “Sorry?”

            Sandy sighs. “There’s no reason why that shouldn’t have been shocking to you, what with what ‘everybody knows’ in this city.” He turns to Pitch, and with a few economical hand gestures, he’s holding a dim golden light in his palm. “Take off your coat. I need to see your arm.”

            “Don’t be,”—the carriage goes over a bump and Pitch inhales sharply—“absurd. What are you going to do here, anyway?”

            “I may not have any sun-salve, but I’m fairly sure I could think of something!”

            “You’re worrying too much about this, Sandy. And…” Pitch turns his gaze to the worn black velvet of the carriage curtains. “And do you really think either sun-salve or your improvised light workings could help me?”

            “I know your feelings about sun-salve,” Sandy says, a look of such pain crossing his face that Jack can’t match it with the simple words. “But if I can’t help you right now…at least let me see, Pitch. It’s the not-knowing that’s terrible.”

            After a long pause, Pitch hangs his head. “The task of removing my jacket is easier said than done.”

            “Jack, help him,” Sandy commands, and though Jack would like to know why Sandy doesn’t aid his lover, it’s not something he wants to ask in such a small space. Something about them reminds him of the Serene in late winter, a barely-present memory that tells him only not to try to crack the ice over the early snowmelt when he’s a quarter mile from either shore.

            Pitch curses in three languages while Jack removes his coat, at least until Jack pulls the sleeve off of his frozen arm. Then, he goes utterly still and silent, his grayish skin paling even further.

            Once his coat is off, he rolls up his sleeve and presents his arm to Sandy. “Is this what you wanted to see?” The skin of his hand and arm is taut, shiny, and red, with his fingers showing the most obvious swelling.

            Sandy sighs and looks back to Pitch’s face. “Of course I didn’t _want_ to see this, Pitch. But I was worried that it could be worse. Are you sure I can’t…”

            Pitch raises his eyebrows. “I’m not sure about a lot of things, Sandy. But I am sure that I would be unconvincing in making the argument you’re asking me to make.”

            Sandy shakes his head and leans back into the carriage seat, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Pitch, if you knew,” he begins, but doesn’t finish his statement and turns to Jack instead. “Light adepts and shadow adepts cannot physically touch. The touch of light harms shadow, and light does no harm. Usually, light will prevent contact by magical means, but between powerful adepts this is not as reliable as it should be. It’s not something that should be tested.”

            Jack nods, and, fortunately for him, before he has to think of a response, the carriage comes to a halt, creaking as North jumps down from the driver’s seat.

            “Toothiana!” They hear him call from outside, followed by the sound of boots crunching over gravel.

            “What’s the Director of the library doing here?” Jack asks.

            “It’s a long story,” Pitch says, at the same time as Sandy answers, “She’s a fire worker. Adept, now, I think.”

            Jack frowns in puzzlement. “So does that mean that…” he trails off as Sandy unlatches the carriage door and the sight of the drive greets them. Only a few gas lamps remain lit and intact around the gravel circle in front of North’s house, but the slight illumination they give to the scene reveals enough to make them all gasp.

            At first glance, it looks like a wasteland. Pale-gray flakes of ash drift through the air like moths, slowly settling into thin drifts on the gravel, which is itself now darkly charred. Sandy notices at once that the circumference of the burned area encompasses an area significantly larger than the original pattern—of which nothing can be seen. Not a splinter of wood remains, and, in fact, the only thing he can see that isn’t blackened stone is—

            “Toothiana!” North cries again, sounding even more distressed than before. He kneels before her figure in the center of the burned area, holding his arms above her stiffly, awkwardly. Pitch glances at Sandy, and Sandy glances at Pitch, neither wanting to meet the other’s eyes. They do not want their recognition of this pose to be too obvious—the pose of someone who wants to touch another but cannot.

            “Take Jack inside,” Sandy says to Pitch, and without waiting to see if obeys, follows the churned up gravel to where North now kneels. At the center of the burned area, the rock is uncomfortably warm to stand on, even through boots, and Sandy’s almost sure that North’s burning himself right now, his hands hovering here and there over Toothiana’s form, searching for a safe place to hold her.

            Sandy doubts he’ll find one. This close to her, it’s become clear that Toothiana’s body is the source of the intense heat. The air around her skin shimmers with it, and Sandy, noticing the brittle remains of the asbestos robe beside her, is at once grateful that they didn’t arrive earlier.

            “This is very scandalous, no?” North says thickly. His hands are an angry red, with blisters already forming on the palms. “This is not. This is not what I expected to happen.”

            “North.” Sandy places his hand on his shoulder. There’s no point now in explaining how it could have been worse. Before them, Toothiana’s eyes are closed, but her chest and abdomen rise and fall with deep, calm breaths. “I think she’ll be all right. Burning yourself won’t do either of you any good. I think….Is there anything in the house we can use to move her safely?”

            “My house is not hospital,” North says. Sandy remains quiet. “But…” North sighs. “There is a long cart used at the smithy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm noticing a sort of theme here, that possession of magic makes it difficult for others to touch one safely.


	21. A Moment Upstairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy, Pitch, Jack, Tooth, and North have a quiet moment of recuperation at North's house. Pitch speaks of some things he knows of fire adepts, and Sandy continues keeping a secret from Pitch.

            In an effort to avoid straining the loyalty and silence of North’s staff, Sandy, Pitch, Jack, and Tooth retreat to a long, out-of-the-way room just under the roof of one wing of the house. North had muttered that it had originally been intended as a nursery—or at least that’s what Sandy had thought he’d said—before rushing off to lower floors to get a few more things they need. The room contains mostly old furniture, though little of it seems damaged. Sandy guesses the various chairs, sofas, and tables are simply from a few fashion cycles before the current one, and that this room holds them as a way station before they’re turned into kindling. It seems an odd room for North to have, both in intended and actual function, but the existence of this hideout is the least of the concerns of those now in it.

            Pitch sits in a window seat looking out over the front lawn and the remains of the fire, his left arm immersed in a large bowl of tepid water, provided by North with little fuss after he had taken a quick look at Pitch’s arm. Apparently, such injuries weren’t uncommon where he had grown up—and they had never been able to turn to magic for healing.

            At a table underneath a gas lamp, Jack pours over the newspapers of the last few days, learning what everyone else in the city has been told about him. While he had exclaimed frequently at first, in the last half-hour he’s been utterly silent.

            A little way off from either Pitch or Jack, Toothiana lies on a cast-iron wheeled cart, brought up here by the mechanical lifting system in North’s house. She looks like any calmly sleeping person, save that her only bedclothes are a heat-resistant blanket. North had fretted about how rough it was, about how it wasn’t meant to be used like this, it was supposed to be for protecting someone from dangerous fires, and surely Toothiana deserved better than this. Unfortunately, the fine fleece blanket North had provided as a much more suitable option had started to smoke after only a few minutes in contact with her skin.

            Sandy stands near the iron cart, looking down at her. She wouldn’t want to be sleeping through this, would she? And since she was the one who knew the most about fire adepts out of all of them, it would probably be best if they had her advice on how to take care of her after her transformation.

            If Toothiana could ever be woken, he could wake her now. He wouldn’t even need any extra taste of light to do so. The power to wake another was one of the most fundamental skills of a light adept. He raises his hands so that they hover a few inches away from her temples, but the height of the cart makes the angle awkward. He spots a footstool near Pitch and goes to retrieve it.

            “I’d let her sleep if I were you,” Pitch says as soon as Sandy’s near enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice.

            Sandy smiles. “I know your personal opinions on matters such as these quite well,” he says, lifting the stool and turning away from Pitch.

            “I’m serious,” Pitch says sharply. “Or do you think you’re fireproof?” He flexes his hand slightly in the basin of water.

            Sandy turns back to him, sets the stool down, and sits on it. “Do you really think there’s that much danger?”

            Pitch looks out the window, frowning. “We’ve both survived in the world for a very long time. But, as you see,”—he gestures to his arm—“we’re obviously not invulnerable. Jack’s magic was dangerous to me. I don’t see any reason why Toothiana’s magic should not be dangerous to you.”

            Sandy puts his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in his hands. “It all seems so obvious now, doesn’t it? That light and shadow were once part of one whole magic? No other kind of magic is safe. But we light adepts wanted to be special, we wanted to be good, we wanted to be the best. We wanted to act like our inability to do harm—false as that was—was as good as choosing not to. We thought we were pure, when really we were—and I am—incomplete. Incomplete, and with no knowledge of how to become a healthy whole again.”

            “Magics are not identical,” Pitch says. “And if you’re incomplete, so am I. I’m sure many more things will become clear when we open the moonpools.” Pitch looks back to Sandy, who looks away.

            “Yes.” He nods. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

            The feeling of secrecy presses upon Pitch’s mind again. What could Sandy be keeping from him? Well, he’s here now, and he’s safe now, and that’s all that matters for at least a little while longer. Sandy can’t keep a secret forever.

            “Anyway,” Pitch says, “there’s another reason why I think you shouldn’t wake her. Even though I never saw any fire adept initiations during the time I spent in the Empire, I did talk to enough fire workers and adepts to gain an understanding of what can happen during the initiation process. Finding the adept asleep after the pattern of their fire has burned away is not common, but it happens. In the Empire they leave the adept in the center of the ashes until they awaken. The idea is that the fire they made to change themselves has moved within them, to continue changing them beyond the power in the set pattern they used. The adepts sleep because the fire changes their very souls. And in what state is a soul more mutable than in dreams?”

            “Did you ever meet any adepts that had experienced this?”

            Pitch shakes his head. “In most of the stories, the sleep after the transformation was accompanied by other, dramatic physical changes. The adepts who dreamed fire, as they say, while both powerful and subtle in their understanding of fire, generally became unfit for interaction with ordinary human society.”

            Sandy closes his eyes. “I wish I hadn’t asked Toothiana to do this. I haven’t been thinking…I’ve been thinking too big. I wish…Pitch, how can this be about everyone but feel so much like it’s just about us?” He opens his eyes and looks over at Jack. “All will be well someday.”

            “Are you angry?” Pitch asks.

            “At Jack?” Sandy shakes his head, rubs a hand over his face.

            “Not at Jack.”

            Sandy sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Except that I feel like there’s no point in my feeling anything anymore.” He looks down. “It’s not strange for me. A lot of years on the island, I was just a vessel for Light. It was all right then. But now I’m thinking about it, and I don’t think I like it.” He smiles briefly. “Maybe I’ve lived only two lifetimes despite surviving five.”

            “It’s still more than most people do,” Pitch says.

            “How’s your arm?”

            “It feels like I shoved the whole thing into a nest of angry hornets. I think that might be a good sign of recovery.”

            Sandy smiles again, longer than before. “You’d know about that comparison, wouldn’t you?”

            “A memory I would have wished faded in five hundred years.”

            “I’m surprised you’re not complaining more.”

            “I exaggerated all my hurts when we were at the Academy together,” Pitch says. “Didn’t you ever realize?”

            “No,” Sandy says, with a soft, broken laugh. “Probably because I was—mostly—trying to memorize the feel of my mentee’s skin as I slathered it with sun-salve, and trying to deny that I was doing just that.”

            “So you’ll understand why I don’t care for histrionics now.”

            North returns with more wood for the fireplace, more water, some simple food that can be prepared over an open fire, and tools to fix the disused pump and basin at one end of the room.

 

            North had said the basin would be a simple fix, but he’s already been working at it for half an hour when Sandy makes his way through the dusty maze of upholstery to see what’s going on.

            “Everything all right?” he asks.

            North turns to him, distracted. “Hmm? Oh…yes. I suppose so. I am…almost done. But this should be perfect, yes? No need to have it slip into such disrepair.”

            “North?” Sandy says, and North leans back on his heels, looking across all the old furniture to the circle of gaslight.

            “There was nothing stopping me from asking for her hand, you know,” he says. “But I think…I think I wanted to wait until the time was right. Until we were both free. And free from what? From the city’s thoughts of what we were? That is not something that anyone can ever claim.” He puts away a few tools with deliberate care. “Do you think she will cool?”

            “I don’t know,” Sandy says. “It’s Pitch who spent time travelling the world. He may have a guess. She should wake, though.” Sandy pauses, the silence around the basin broken only by the soft clink of tools being returned to their proper places. “And what if…what if she does not cool?”

            North settles down onto the floor. “It would not be the worst thing…but still I would not like it. I would make her clothes. Travelling clothes, I suppose. I do not know why she would wish to stay here with people who did not understand.”

            “I’m sorry,” Sandy says, and North carefully closes his toolbox.

            “But she was always a fire adept, yes?” North says. “Only she could kindle those flames. Sandy, I know something big is happening here, something bigger than my own heart. But that is always the way of the world, I think. At least you are trying to put things right.”

            Sandy smiles sadly. “Trying,” he repeats. “Thank you, North. For all you’ve done. I think we won’t be intruding on your hospitality for much longer. The autumn equinox is in five days. Whatever’s going to be done, I think it has to be done then.”

            “Does Pitch agree?”

            “I haven’t told him,” Sandy says.

            North sighs. “I thought light adepts were not supposed to be ones for keeping secrets.”

            “It’s not a secret.” Sandy looks down the room to where Pitch sits. “He would know if he let himself think about it. There’s only one…way to undo what’s been done.”

            “And how do you know he does not know this?”

            “Because he hasn’t tried to argue against it,” Sandy says quietly.

            “Hmm.” North stands and brushes some dust off his knees. “Five days. We should all get some sleep tonight then, yes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!


	22. Outside in the Sunlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy goes to a park and finally says out loud what he knows is before him. Toothiana wakes, and asks Sandy for his help. Pitch begs Sandy to reveal his secret.

            Sandy wakes well before the first light of dawn begins to tint the sky gray. In the faint light from the gas lamps outside, he can see Jack bundled up in a thick cocoon of blankets near the cold fireplace, Toothiana just as she was the night before, and the makeshift miniature tent Pitch must have constructed for himself after Sandy went to sleep, to prevent the sun that would stream through the curtainless windows later from reaching his unprotected skin. He pulls one of the quilts he slept under around himself and slips off the old sofa that served him for a bed, wincing, then smiling, as his feet hit the chill wooden floor. The valves to the steam-pipe system up here have rusted tight, much to North’s chagrin, but Sandy reminds himself that Autumn is meant to be cool, the changing seasons ought to be felt.

            He tiptoes over to Pitch and his face-tent and lifts one corner of the blanket. Asleep, Pitch looks only his frozen twenty-four years. The illusion makes Sandy feel over a thousand. And what would Sandy a millennium old tell quarter-century Sandy? _Hold tight to him and never let him go. Let him go once and he’ll be gone forever._ But that’s not true, is it? Pitch is only here, now, Pitch is only still the one he loves because he let him go, again and again. The problem’s going to come when he asks him to hang on.

            He wants to smile as he looks at Pitch, so handsome, pale, and peaceful. Like an enchanted prince in a starstory. He wants to scream when he looks at Pitch, because kissing him won’t fix everything, won’t fix anything. Will ruin everything. He stays another moment, and another. Still the dawn approaches apace, and he can’t miss the dawn, there might not even be enough if he catches every one. Pitch’s chest rises and falls again, and again. Sandy knows he should have slept in his room downstairs. North’s staff knows that he’s here. And yet, how could he have passed up the opportunity to sleep in the same room as Pitch? The chances had been rare enough when they could touch.

            “ _I love you_ ,” Sandy whispers, replacing the blanket. He doesn’t try to comfort himself with _all will be well someday_ , for Light seems stranger every day and after all he was never able to say _for us_.

 

            After gathering the dawn light, there’s still little sign of anyone’s waking in the house, so Sandy dresses to walk out to the large, semi-wild park between North’s house and the city center. North, he knows, thinks that they need to plan and prepare, but, really, there’s no need to plan. As for preparations, those are his alone. _And Pitch’s,_ his mind whispers insistently to him.

            He sighs, making his way across a sunny meadow, long grass just starting to dry to gold. He and Pitch would fight over this, or if not fight, certainly not remain calm. And isn’t that what he wants? He doesn’t want Pitch to acquiesce right away, not to this. But, oh, wouldn’t that make it easier? Wouldn’t that make so everything so much easier?

 

            “ _I remember when you were a wilderness_ ,” Sandy says to the trees as he passes underneath their dappled leaf-shadows. “ _I remember so much. I’ve had so much life. More than any man should ask for. And now? Now? Is this where love leads? Is this how Light treats love?_ ” When he next speaks, it isn’t to the trees, and perhaps is even less likely to be heeded. “ _I love him, and I love the City of the Moon, and I love the Lunar Kingdom and why did you let me remain so distant? Was it for this? Was it to check my love? To make it less fierce? To make it easier to let go? Then you’ve failed!_ ”

            He reaches a small clearing, a hub for several paths through the park, but doesn’t cross it. He places a hand on one of the tree trunks at the outer edge of the clearing, the shaded bark cool and rough underneath his hand, a beautiful thing, a real thing, wondrous in detail, wondrously alive. Above him, little birds fly in and out of the branches, red and blue and gray, singing their own songs about the changing light of the year, preparing to fly away from the Lunar Kingdom; they know if they stay they will die, they know that they should take their mates to places of warmth and sunshine until the light changes again and it is safe to return.  

            Sandy tightens his hand into a fist and presses it against the bark, feeling the ridges embedding themselves in his skin. Against a tree like this, human strength is nothing, and yet, with a word, Sandy could command the earth beneath its roots to reveal itself, and the tree would topple, its limbs tearing away from the other trees they’ve become entwined with over long years, leaving a vast sunlight gap in the canopy of the wood. And though new life would quickly grow to heal that wound, Sandy cannot think of one good reason why he would do such a thing.

            “ _Why me?_ ” He whispers, a question he’s asked many times, yes, but the burden he carries is now so much heavier, so much more specific than before. “ _Shall I let you speak through me so I might hear the answer?_ ” He shakes his head. “ _I shall not. There is too much of Light in me already, isn’t there? And I am the only one._ ” Tears well in his eyes, and he lets them fall. Let there be no hiding of anything anymore, the equinox four days hence. “ _It must be me because there is no one else, and it must be me because I am alone and yet never alone. It must be me because I will say yes. Because I did not follow Kozzy when he left, but I followed him to the moonpool._

“ _Why must the same heart be asked to love both Light and a man? Is that the balance of it all? Was the pattern always set this way? To lead us to a moment that must come, sooner or later if all is to be made right, a moment that can only be faced by lovers? Only faced by lovers…it would be better—I wish it was my burden alone. I wish it had not come to this. I wish…I wish there were another way to end this pattern._ ”

            “Sandy?” The voice is almost familiar, but then what voice isn’t, after so many years and after meeting so many new people in the past few—strange to think how few—days. “Are you all right?”

            He wipes his eyes with the corner of his coat sleeve and looks up to see Seraphina of the flower shop approaching him from the other side of the small clearing, her spring-green dress clashing with the early-autumn colors all around. “It depends on what you mean,” he says, after greeting her, palm to heart, bark-patterned hand hidden in a sleeve. “I’m fairly sure I’m right, but it’s because of that I’m not at all well.”

            “Is it something you could talk about?” Seraphina asks. “That is, if you’re alone. Bunny told me about meeting you and…my grand uncle, you know.”

            “I’m sorry I kept that a secret from you when you told me.”

            Seraphina gives him a little smile. “You’d only just met me. I’m not worried about the secrets you keep. Bunny told me what he knew was important, and that’s what matters to me.”

            Sandy sighs, a guilty expression crossing his face. “Seraphina, I am alone. And I would like to talk, though I’ve no right to ask an ear from you.”

            “Do you feel like you ought to be talking to other light adepts?” she asks. “But the problem is, there’s no one left to talk to.”

            “You’re young enough that it would be more usual for you to be working at your parents’ business, wouldn’t it?” Sandy asks.

            “What’s usual? I just don’t think anyone ought to cry alone, not when they don’t have to. Come on. There’s a bench on the path over this way.”

           

            “In a way I’m glad I ran into you,” Seraphina says. She and Sandy sit on a small stone bench in the shade, the simple pattern of carved leaves on its sides already heavily worn, the legs sunk into the soft ground so that even Sandy’s feet easily rest there. “Otherwise, I’d have spent my walk just worrying about Bunny.”

            “Has something happened? If it’s because of me, I’ll try to put it right as soon…” he trails off, and his shoulders slump. Seraphina expects a bowed head to complete the posture, but instead he keeps staring out at the undergrowth, all hardening seedpods and fluffy little pink and orange moonlet flowers.

            “Because of the fire at the palace there’re a lot of things to set to rights in the gardens,” she says. “So he’s busy, it’s not strange, but I don’t like to think of him around all the new guards I saw when I said goodbye to him this morning. They don’t like to see him doing earth adept things, even if that’s why they hired him. Anyway. He couldn’t leave for our weekly walk. I came anyway but it wasn’t helping my worries.”

            “The palace will have more than gardeners to watch, soon,” Sandy says. He frowns. “But I really don’t know when you’ll be free of your worries.”

            “These worries haven’t yet brought tears to my eyes,” Seraphina says. “What of yours?”

            “I’m not sure where to begin.” He looks up at the sky. “There’s so much to explain, so much about magic that you’ve never learned, so much history that you’ve never learned because it was hidden and that’s not what I need to talk about…”

            “Sandy. Tell me what you want. Maybe I don’t need to know all those things to listen to you.”

            “I’m…I’m just afraid of how you might react. I’m afraid you won’t believe me.”

            “I trust you, Sandy.”

            And hadn’t Pitch said the same? “Why? Because I’m a light adept? Because there’s so little home magic left in this land that you and everyone else is drawn to me like moths? It’s not right, I haven’t earned it, I have to put it right and that’s why…”

            “Maybe that’s all true,” Seraphina says, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still here and willing to listen.”

            Sandy nods, closing his eyes and biting his lips. He turns to look at her, catching her eyes. Does their dark brown match that of Pitch when he was the boy Kozzy?  He can’t remember, not exactly. “I have to die soon, Seraphina. And I don’t want to die.” The words, once spoken, close his throat, and he looks out into the trees again, his hands trembling as they did after finishing Zalla’s book. Had his body known before his mind? Of course it had, of course. It was light running in his veins now, the kind of light needed to undo the deepest darkness of the Dimming, the kind of light that would ensure no history would be hidden again. All would be needed.

            “Sandy?” Seraphina asks, and Sandy looks back at her, welling eyes seeing her hovering arms. _That’s kind_ , he thinks, and smiles. When she hugs him, he startles before leaning into her embrace, tears falling on her shoulder, tears for himself, tears for Pitch, tears for them together and apart, tears for the way this simple comfort is never simple as it should be, tears for even a brief life of warm embraces like this away from light and shadow and fire and ice, lost to him with but two sips of water.

            She doesn’t say anything for a while, just holds him. He has no idea what she’s thinking, and when he feels her breathe to speak, he tenses, waiting for some question he can’t answer.

            Instead, she says, “And he was sore troubled.” Sandy looks up at her with a very small smile.

            “So that’s what they mean when they say that in starstories, do they? Crying into the shoulders of strangers?”

            She squeezes his shoulders. “I suppose so. Maybe even crying without a stranger’s shoulders. I’m sorry, Sandy. I don’t know what to say and, true, I don’t understand. But I don’t want you to die. And I do want it to all work out in the end.”

            “That’s why I have to die,” Sandy says. “So it will all work out in the end. So all will be well.” His sigh turns into a few more tears. “But I don’t want you to think that means there won’t be any more light adepts. There will be, that’s why…”

            “When I said I didn’t want you to die, I meant _you_ , not just your magic,” Seraphina says softly.

            Sandy leans into her. “That’s lovely to say, but you don’t know if it’s true. We just met…and I, more than any other adept save one, may be impossible to separate from my magic. Or maybe that’s true for all us adepts. The magic doesn’t belong to us, it is us. And so, when magic is needed,” he opens his hands, “so are we.”

            “It’s hard to imagine you dying,” she says after a long pause. “You’ve always been there.”

            “Not as much as I should have. Or not the way I should have…” Sandy trails off. “I won’t die alone.”

            “Sandy?”

            “Be careful on the equinox, please? For me? I don’t know…everything…that’s going to happen.” He looks over into the undergrowth again, memorizing it for a future that won’t be there.

           

            “Sandy!” Pitch rushes forward towards the doorway as soon as he sees the top of Sandy’s golden curls. “Where were you? You—”

            “I took a walk in the park,” Sandy interrupts.

            “What? With the city like it is? But you couldn’t have known that, drifting off in a dream before the morning paper arrived, by the black of the fucking abyss—”

            Sandy looks at Pitch’s face, creased with anger and worry, and sighs. Is it kindness or cruelty that no lines have stayed on their faces after the moonpool? Their faces don’t tell the truth, neither of their bodies tells the whole truth anymore. “Pitch. Please don’t speak like that. Not now.”

            Pitch cuts his tirade short immediately. “What do you mean, not now?”

            “I’ll explain later,” Sandy says, looking away, and the weight of the secret feels heavy enough to Pitch to make his heart stop. “What’s happened?”

            “I’m terrorizing the city and you’re to be brought to the palace for safety. Jack and I are to be captured dead or alive. I’ve probably kidnapped Toothiana. North sent all his servants away after the paper arrived, but there’s so many of them and you weren’t hidden at all while travelling here. I expect we’re going to get a royal visit before too long. Oh, and Toothiana’s awake. The first person she saw was Jack and—I really don’t know, Sandy. Jack’s downstairs in North’s library, I think, and North’s trying to talk to Toothiana. She’s asking for you and I think you’d better go to her. Just make sure to avoid the smoking hole in the floor.”

            Sandy stares at Pitch for several moments before beginning to laugh giddily. He laughs until tears stream down his face and he’s gasping for breath. When he finally collects himself, he looks up at Pitch with a cheery smile. “So that whole plan and they still jumped to the conclusion that you were involved!”

            “They’ve blamed years of failed crops on me, Sandy, it was still a good plan,” Pitch says wearily. “At least this way no one got hurt and I didn’t have to do anything extreme.”

            Sandy points to Pitch’s arm, the visible hand still raw and red, with a questioning expression.

            Pitch shrugs, moving his frozen shoulder as little as possible. “I didn’t have to meddle deeply with anyone’s mind. You can probably still rehabilitate me to the people.”

            Sandy stares at him before nodding. That idea seems like it belongs to a memory of their academy days. “And what about Toothiana? No, don’t tell me, I’ll go see her.”

            “Well, she’s _not_ hurt, I can guarantee you.”

            Sandy pulls on one of his curls sharply, smile still on his face. “Very well. All right. So, Pitch, I think that we definitely do not need to deal with the king’s messengers today. Please, I pray you, do whatever it takes to secure this house.”

            “And how long are we to act besieged?” Pitch asks as Sandy moves farther into the attic.

            Sandy stops in his tracks, and this time he doesn’t turn to Pitch. “Till the equinox,” he says, and Pitch can tell the smile is gone from his face.

            “Sandy.” Pitch calls out to him. “I can threaten you with nothing. So instead, I beg you. Tell me the secret that weighs upon you. I can feel the burden of it myself, so I know it must lie heavier on you. I would rather we shared one load than each dragged our own.”

            “ _Tonight_ ,” Sandy says, the word more like stone than light.

            “ _Tonight_ ,” Pitch repeats. He takes a breath as if to say more, but instead turns and descends the stair to find his case of shadows.

 

            Toothiana sits upright on the metal cart, her fingers wrapped around the edge, the metal glowing softly red under her touch. The air around her body shimmers, and her bright red eyes seem almost to shine with their own inner light. Beside her, North holds the asbestos blanket folded over one of his arms, a worried expression on his face. “Toothiana,” he says, as if for the hundredth time.

            “Sandy!” Her glimmering gaze fixes on him. “You. You I spoke to, before I was adept. We must speak again.”

            Sandy nods as he approaches within a few steps of the cart. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a heavily scorched place on the floor very near where he last saw Jack. The light’s not quite good enough to see if there’s really a hole, but he sees no reason to doubt Pitch. “Do you want to speak with me alone?”

            She looks at North. “I’m sorry. But yes.”

            “Perhaps is more suitable anyway,” North replies, the brief movement of his lips barely a smile. “If you need me, I will be in…the kitchens. Yes.”

            “You are Sandy,” Toothiana says when North has left. “I recognize you, and that you are a light adept. There was a shadow adept here called Pitch. I think I should have recognized him. There was a boy of water here that I attacked upon waking. This was wrong of me, but the fear of being doused upon kindling is one of my oldest. The man North is another I think I should recognize.” Her eyes slide away from Sandy. “He had burns on his hands, and while I was sorry to see him burned I was not troubled to know how he had likely gotten them. He wanted to cover me, and I know he thought this was courtesy, but to an adept it is an offer to smother. I was harsh with him. I do not think I would have wanted to be.” She looks around the attic. “This is not a good place for me to have awakened. At least I am older than many newly kindled, and a measure of control seems familiar to me…but you are the only one I recognize, and you are no fire adept. There are things that must be done, and I do not remember them.” Her eyes are dim with pain when she meets Sandy’s gaze again. “And even if I did remember them, maybe they are things that cannot be done alone.”

            “Alone or no,” Sandy says, then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before continuing, “you are a fire adept. You changed fire, you walked through it, and now you’ve woken, yourself changed. But more than this, I don’t know. We only spoke a few times.”

            Toothiana frowns. “I think…I think I remember hearing once, as a little sparking child, that the adepts who kindled with no memories often regained them, slowly. That must mean that the memories have not all burned away—as indeed mine have not. I remember the streets of Caldera…but I need more recent memories, and I feel there is no time. Sandy, light reveals, does it not? Could you reveal my memories to me? I need to know of myself why I am here.”

            “If you were not an adept, I would answer you with an unhesitating yes,” Sandy says. “And for you, I will try. But I do not know how our magics will react when they meet. I don’t want to damage your flame. If your memories remain, I can reveal them to you, but what I will do now—I will be gentle, and you may not find all your memories at once.”

            “It is better than finding them not at all, or only begin to find them a year hence,” she says. “What must I do?”

            “Just relax, and listen,” Sandy says. “As I said, this will be a gentle working.”

            He cannot remember the words that accompany the melody of this song that asks the hidden parts of a mind to be hidden no more, but as the long notes flow from his throat, he wonders if this does not make the working stronger, the difference between calling a flower to bloom and pulling its petals apart. Without words, some of the intervals between the notes remind him of the Origin Tones.

            So focused is he on his song, that it’s not until he finishes it that he notices that Toothiana has settled down onto the cart again. The metal against her skin no longer glows, and her sleep looks peaceful. Sandy nods to her before heading down to find the others. _May your next waking be better than your first_.

 

            “So tell me once more, Sandy, what is end goal?” North leans forward over a heavy wooden table as he twists and bends a piece of wire into something Sandy can’t identify. Bowls and spoons from an abandoned baking project form a low wall around him.

            “The water workings trapping the moonpool water will be broken. The whole kingdom will know that moonpool water is the source of this land’s magic, and that from this source spring both light and shadow magics. The revelation of these facts will be such that they can never be hidden again.”

            “And what about the histories you have told me about? And the laws and lies of the king today?”

            “There’s no time,” Sandy says softly. “There is much that I would do, North, if only…if only. But I think with the moonpool water free and just a few truths revealed, this land will begin to heal.”

            “You do not want to reveal what the past kings did? You do not think there is danger this king can stop your plan?”

            “The books will still exist. And Apolyon can’t stop what I plan to do. He’s not used to magic. He doesn’t understand it. When the people regain what they’ve lost, he won’t be able to take it from them. Maybe he won’t even want to. He’s not facing adepts as a political group, anyway. He’ll be able to set himself up as guide and savior when they start appearing.”

            “And what of other adepts, like Jack and Toothiana?”

            “I don’t know!” Sandy snaps. “I wish I did! I wish I could say that when the moonpool water was free the whole kingdom would calm and the laws would be changed! I wish I could say that they’d be safe! I wish I could fix everything and _know_ that it would stay fixed! But I can’t! I can only make sure that a few pieces of knowledge can never be lost again, and free the source, and I can’t even do any of that alone!” He slumps back in his chair, then immediately sits up. “North, I need to be outside. If you want to keep talking to me, follow me. If not, I understand.”

 

            The wire in North’s hands sends bright spots racing across brick and grass as it catches and reflects the brilliant gleam of the sunlight that Sandy now continuously gathers into his hands and drinks. “Sandy. There is no time to fix everything before equinox, yes, but after?”

            “ _My light will be snuffed out_ ,” Sandy says in Shining. Light spills from his shaking hands as he thinks of how easily the words spilled from his lips.

            North watches a few drops of light soak into the dying grass. “You are keeping me in the dark, me and Pitch and everyone else. Maybe I cannot help you so much because I am not adept, but I want to help you somehow. That is why you are here, no?” He looks out to the hazy ten-foot wall of shadow that surrounds his house and grounds and sighs. “Even that! I do not understand that power, but I did understand how to treat frostnip.”

            “North…I’ll explain after dinner. But I need…I need to be out in the sunlight right now.”

            North nods. “Maybe I will go try to talk to Pitch then about all this.”

            Sandy gives him a small smile. “Good luck.”

            “I am thinking you should try to keep all of that which you have, my friend,” North says.


	23. Dinner at North's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy finally reveals to Pitch the secret he's been keeping.

            The light from the gas lamps in the dining room shines warm and homelike over those gathered within, though a home that could encompass all of them is something Sandy’s sure has never been seen in all the history of the world.

            North sits at the head of the table, perhaps trying to provide some sense of normalcy. Jack sits at his left hand, his mouth drawn and with circles under his eyes so dark it’s as if he’s been bruised by all the newspapers he’s been reading. On North’s right, Toothiana sits, and while her expressions look much like the ones Sandy’s seen her wear before, she frequently seems to focus on some point far more distant than any of the walls, or tilts her head as though listening for some faint sound. She’s consented to wear a tightly woven wool robe, calling for it after several hours alone in the attic. Sandy doesn’t think she was sleeping all that time, but she doesn’t volunteer any information. Regardless, sitting next to her now is cooler than sitting next to an open flame. Sandy guesses contact with her bare skin might still be dangerous.

            Across from Sandy sits Pitch. As the dinner winds down and any inconsequential talk falls even flatter than it did before, they meet each other’s eyes more frequently. Pitch’s are wide with anxiety, and Sandy curses himself for a fool for thinking the last moments before revealing to him what had to happen would be calm ones.

            North sets his napkin on the table. “Friends,” he says, “this is not how I would have liked to gather you. But, I have hosted worse dinners. This one, I believe, will at least lead to secrets being revealed and concrete action taken.” He looks to Jack and Tooth. “I hope so, anyway. This situation is not one that will last.”

            “It won’t,” Toothiana and Sandy say at the same time, and look at each other in surprise. He nods at her to go on, and she straightens and smooths the folds of her robe. “I simply mean to say that I feel change in the very air now. This isn’t prophecy. The change is happening right now. Already, it is no longer the same city I have known.”

            “Does it feel like the ending of a working?” Pitch asks.

            “I don’t know what it feels like,” Toothiana says, looking down at her plate. “I haven’t been around much magic other than my own for years.”

            “It’s not something you should recognize,” Sandy says, and stands, though this action doesn’t bring his face much higher than anyone else’s. “What’s happening now has never happened before.” He grips the table’s edge to still the trembling of his hands. He feels dampness from his palms wrinkling the crisp linen of the tablecloth. “But I have figured out how to make sure it will never happen again.”

            “Is this your secret?” Pitch asks, too softly for anyone but Sandy to hear clearly. “Why have you kept it?”

            Sandy takes a deep breath. “The most important things we must accomplish are the freeing of the moonpool water, so that new light and shadow adepts may be found; the spreading of the knowledge that moonpool water is the source of this land’s magic, and the revelation of the fact that light and shadow magic spring from the same source. And these things must be done in such a way that they can never be undone.” He can’t hold Pitch’s eyes. “Do you agree?”

            “You know how to do this?” Pitch asks as the others slowly nod with more or less understanding on their faces.

            “Yes. And we will accomplish these things on the autumn equinox, four days from now.”

            “Surely we will need more time to prepare,” Pitch says. “If you want an equinox, why not wait till spring? It would not be pleasant, but it would make us more confident of our ends, wouldn’t it?”

            Sandy shakes his head. “It must be autumn. There is little preparation needed. Pitch. Perhaps the spring might do, but I…I want it to be autumn. What I mean to say…autumn makes me think of you. And at the autumn equinox, the lengthening nights that follow brook no denial of shadow. That is what I want to follow this working. I want there to be no chance that shadow adepts will be forced to the margins ever again.”

            “Of course,” Pitch says quietly. “Of course.” He looks down at the table, resting his hands flat on the cloth. Sandy wonders if he’s trying to still his own trembling. “The autumn does make a certain sense, for this.” He looks up. “But I—” his voice creaks and he takes a careful sip of his wine. “Sandy, I remember the year’s unsubtle patterns. The power you will draw from the autumn equinox is—Sandy, I can still feel you hold a secret. How will you do the things you say you will do?”

            He can’t reassure him, and so he doesn’t. Pitch’s face pales a little more, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Sandy. “How will you do this?” he asks.

            “I will not be acting alone,” Sandy begins. “The water-workings at the moonpools must be broken. I do not think finesse is needed here, only power.” He gestures to North without taking his eyes off Pitch. “As we stay in his house, have you not noticed the life in the water? Even the dynamite was able to damage the working enough to let the moonpool water seep into North’s well. Thus the reason why North was never so greedy for Jack’s magic as the rest.

            “And the water workings were only meant to hold liquid water. I believe the workings will crack when the water in them becomes ice or steam.”

            “But a flood is needed, and a crack will not let it through,” Pitch whispers.

            “Once the water workings are damaged by the water within them, then I will begin…my working.” Within Sandy’s pause, no one breathes. “I will sing to call the water out, and I will sing the knowledge that must be remembered. And then.”

            He stands as tall as he can, removing his hands from the edge of the table. “The concealment of the history of the magic of this land began with the death of a light adept. Not a drop of his blood spilled, and so the concealment would have held perfectly for all time, save that there were many things to hide, and Zalla could not hold them all strongly in her mind, and had to finish her working using imperfect paper.

            “There is power in the blood of a light adept. Our minds give a continuity to light it otherwise does not have, as the days are broken by nights. Our blood reflects that power, and it becomes thus more potent than any sunshine captured in a single day or starlight gathered over a year. Nur, the adept who died, was young, and yet the containing of his blood held a fundamental secret in this land for over a thousand years. When…when my blood is spilled, the song I sing for it will never be forgotten or hidden.”

            “Th—that is not all,” Pitch says, his voice wavering. “Say the rest. Or I—I will never believe it.”

            Sandy looks at Pitch, meeting his eyes with what he hopes is more compassion than fear. “The working must take all my blood. To be sure of it, none of my light may be held back. _All my light is required_.”

            Pitch’s breathes in quick, shallow gulps of air. He clenches his fist around handfuls of the tablecloth, and Sandy hears silverware clatter and glasses fall. He doesn’t look towards the sound. Let the objects fall where they may, let the others tend to themselves. At this moment, of all moments, Sandy will not look away from Pitch.

            “No!” Pitch shouts, a harsh, sharp cry. “No!” He springs up, shoving his chair back from him. It falls to the floor with a heavy crash as “No!” he shouts again, this time in Erebusian. “Sandy!” he cries, as if it is the only word he can think to say. His next word isn’t a word at all, but only a strangled groan, and from the way Pitch’s mouth twists around the inarticulate sounds tearing from his throat, Sandy would stake a great deal that Pitch had just tried, and failed, to say “no” in Shining.

            “Aeh. N—no.” Pitch repeats, his voice like a lost child’s. He tries and fails to take a deep breath, uses the shallow one to speak anyway. “You cannot spill your own blood, Sandy. You—you KNOW THAT—oh sun and stars you know that. And you—is this different Sandy? Is this the only way?”

            “Of course it’s different!” Sandy shouts. “And it is the only way! You know it from your speaking, as I know it from mine! And why would I—Pitch,” he says, his voice falling to a whisper. “Pitch. If it was the same…I would not…I would not ask this of you.”

            “And what would you ask of me?” Pitch says, his voice bitter as wormwood. “Say it. Say it aloud.”

            “You,” Sandy presses his hand over his mouth for a moment. “Pitch, will you wield the knife that spills my blood?”

            The air of the room becomes murky, save for a narrow aura of clarity around Sandy. The shadows flicker like dark flames, and the lights of the gas lamps shrink to meager blue pinpricks. At the end of the table, North slowly stands, motioning for Jack and Toothiana to move behind him. While Jack obeys at once, Toothiana offers a small smile and a motion as if to place her hand on his forearm before stepping in front of him. He nods when he meets her eyes, and again when she gestures toward the door with her head.

            Neither Pitch nor Sandy notices any of this. Pitch stares at Sandy and Sandy stares at Pitch, no new words coming to either of their lips. The shadows grow, the outlines of objects become indistinct, and even Pitch himself begins to appear blurred, a tall, thin specter in featureless black, the Nightmare King everyone in the city has been taught to fear. Yet the shadows rule only briefly. Pressed upon by darkness, the space around Sandy becomes not just clear but bright, light flaring from him like the sun’s corona, shattering the shadows in the room. The regions of light and darkness slide against each other, the light growing ever brighter, the shadows growing ever darker, both shifting in a complex pattern upon everything in the room. Objects flicker between ghostly unknowability and reality and purpose so clear as to be almost painful to look upon.

            As they inch toward the door, Toothiana, North, and Jack find it nearly impossible to see and understand the short distance they must travel within the ever-moving striations of light and darkness, and if the confusion of the room is not enough, neither are they themselves unaffected as the patterns move over their bodies.

            A dazzling patch sweeps slowly over North and Toothiana, illuminating at once her arm, his arm, and his face and head; he sees the truth of her flesh, the truth of the fire that animates her now and will never be put out and must never be ignored; he sees the truth of his own flesh, the truth of its infinite complexity, the truth of the beauty and fragility where he had been taught to see only strength. He sees and knows that neither of their bodies is infinite, and it hurts like every hurt he’s ever received, but it comforts as well, and in the light he will understand, in but a moment he will understand why it comforts—but the light passes on, and North gasps in the shadow that follows, making the only choice he can and reaching out for the heat of Toothiana’s flame.

            Darkness passes over Toothiana, and she aches with how familiar it feels, the unknowing of herself, the break between body-mind-soul like a permanent separation between fuel-air-heat. Why had she lived like that for so long? She can’t determine whether she should cry or not before the next patch of light slides across her heart and she knows it was the only choice she could have made, she will not blame and so she will not have to forgive herself, all things must happen in their own time and she is not exempt.

            Jack’s hands plunge into light while the rest of him remains in darkness, and as he looks on them he cannot understand how what he sees relates to what he feels; the hands are so beautiful but shame lingers in his heart, why, oh why? There is nothing wrong with these hands, nothing wrong at all, they are his and he will decide whether they are wrong or not. The light is so strong he does not lose this feeling even once the light grows to include his mind and his memories of the past few days, the past few months, return.

            “Sandy, you ask me to kill you,” Pitch says, his voice moving unevenly through the chiaroscuro of the room, but reaching Sandy’s ears all the same. “You ask me to become the monster this city has always believed me to be—no! That does not matter! It cannot matter to me what they will think—that I am traitor to light and your murderer—no, that doesn’t matter at all. Sandy! _You_ ask me to be your murderer! How—how can I—how could I? You, who I’ve loved for all these years, you who have been my guiding star, you who I have finally realized I should always be near, you! Sandy, even in the deepest darkness I have ever known, even as I was chosen, your light—I,” he breaks off and raises his hands to Sandy, showing him how violently they shake. “I could not hold the knife!”

            “Pitch,” Sandy says, the sound of his voice like one calling across a bridgeless chasm. “Pitch, do you not—why do you not speak of how I have asked you to die?”

            The patches of light and shadow in the room grow more fragmented.

            “Because—because that doesn’t matter to me. Sandy! I have lived long enough, and too long without you. If I die with you, if I do not have to go on in this world without you, then I count it the only kindness Light or Shadow has ever given me!”

            “Let it be kindness, then.” Sandy’s shoulders sink down. “Let it be kindness. Pitch. You are the only one I can ask this of. And I do ask it of you. I—” Sandy stops himself before saying more, before he tries to say _I let you go, I let you go three times when I could have asked you to stay_. He had never had the right to try to keep Pitch, and those past times were not bargaining tools. This time, this task, is separate from all others. It requires free accord, not the balancing of record books. It is too large for any record book.

            “For your sake, I will kill you?” The patterns in the room whirl faster.

            “For the sake of the city. For the sake of the kingdom. For the sake of all the light and shadow adepts to come.”

            “All will be well,” Pitch says hollowly. The shadows in the room still and fade, and the light dims to ordinary levels in response. Under the gas lamps, Pitch looks gaunt and exhausted.  “I hate this, Sandy. I hate to see you made a puppet of Light. I hate that there doesn’t seem to be any other choice. I know that the outcome for others will be…glorious. Glorious. I trust your power. And yet”—his voice cracks and he rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand—“I wanted a joyful world, and then I wanted a just world, and after that an understood world, and after that I just wanted a world where you were happy. And now…now I would cause you pain if I refused to kill you.”

            Sandy takes a deep breath. “Will you spill my blood?”

            “Not for the kingdom. Not for the future.”

            “For me, then,” Sandy says.

            “For you.” Pitch pulls out another chair and sinks down into it, resting his head in his uninjured hand. “But I do not know where I will find the strength.”

            Sandy sits down in the chair across from him, noticing as he does so that Toothiana, Jack, and North have fled the room. He feels no impulse to seek them out or offer any reassurance. “I do not know if this will give you strength,” he begins, “but I want to tell it to you now.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “Imagine this, Pitch,” he says as he opens them, “imagine a hearth. Imagine a hearth made of tawny limestone holding a banked fire burning low and red. The fire is banked because it is night, but it still burns low because this hearth is in a bedroom, and the year turns cold outside…”

 

            “…safe under the earth, in glass.” Sandy pauses. “Right now, I feel like that would have been better,” Sandy finishes. “But how could I feel otherwise? At least it wouldn’t be ending like this.”

            “And it would have ended a long time ago,” Pitch says. “Sandy. I have seen such wonderful and terrible things in the world in all these long years. I have been party to more than a few of them. And now…this is too much, Sandy.”

            Sandy looks up into his eyes, those strange eyes, so beautiful, so old, so bright. Looking into those eyes, it’s difficult to believe in death, and yet no matter what comfort they give, still it approaches. His body is required, his blood is required, Pitch’s hand holding the knife that kills them both is required. “We have both been party to terrible and wonderful things, Pitch. Now we will be party to the most terrible and wonderful thing together. If it is too much…it _is_ too much for Sandren and Kozzy.”

            Pitch lets out the smallest, softest sigh at the sound of their oldest names.

            “But it may not be too much for Sandy, the Dreamweaver, and Pitch, the Nightmare King.”

            Sandy smiles at Pitch, and Pitch can’t help himself from smiling back, even now. This smile of Sandy’s is one he knows well enough, and one he’d have liked to know even better. It’s a smile of serenity, a smile of power, a smile as unstoppable as the dawn. A smile that reminds Pitch that no matter what their troubles have been, in some ways Light is Sandy as much as Sandy is Light, and that this can be very, very good. _It might even be good now_ , he thinks, an idea so incomprehensible he carefully tucks it away for further investigation.

            “What I mean to say,” Sandy says, “is that we’re immortals, and we ought to start acting like it.”

            “Act like immortals? As we prepare to…to die?”

            “When else is one supposed to act like an immortal?” Sandy asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's definitely another title I could have chosen for this chapter, but considering Pitch and Sandy's relationship it was an allusion I didn't quite feel comfortable making.


	24. The Plan and Honesty in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first discussion of the details of the equinox. Sandy and Pitch share a moment in the garden as the sun sets.

            Late-morning sunlight fills North’s library, but no one in the group gathered there seems particularly cheered by it. Tooth stands well away from the shelves, her shoulders tense, unconsciously pressing her fingertips together, trying to test her own skin to see if it’s safe for her to touch the books. She reaches no conclusion.

            Jack curls up in a chair, dark rings of exhaustion around his eyes. The sight of him fills Sandy with worry. Used as a tool for so long, and without memory, the boy doesn’t have many real connections within the city, yet all the connections and memories he _does_ have are of the city. His magic can save his life if he uses it when he needs to, but such a display might prevent him from ever leading a normal life in the only place he’s ever known. But there’s not really time for Sandy to fix that, now is there?  His stomach twists and he turns away.

            North looks nearly as tired as Jack as he lays out a series of maps on a large, round, table. While drinking the dawn, Sandy had seen him step outside and stare, for several long minutes, at the wall of shadow surrounding his house.

            “Do you have a plan, for…after?” Sandy had asked North before he asked for everyone to meet in the library.

            “More than one,” North had said. “It all depends on the details of aftermath. I will not waste your time.”

            Now, North calls Sandy and everyone else’s attention to more pressing details. “I have here a map that shows all the old well houses in the city, where they were or where they are. When I bought it, it was merely a curiosity, but I think it is a good map nonetheless. It includes the well house that used to be located on this property.”

            “How many of them are there?” Pitch asks, holding the marked page from the _Chronicle of the Adepts_ open in front of himself and Sandy.

            “Twenty-four,” North answers.

            “This page shows twenty-six marks,” Pitch says. “If we are going to miss two, then should we even—”

            “It’s the Great Moon Fountain and the well in the Dream Cloisters that aren’t being counted,” Sandy guesses.

            North checks his map and nods, while Pitch closes his mouth as if he’s trying to stop something from escaping. He carefully places the chronicle on the table and moves back a half step.

            “A pool for every new and full moon in the Moon’s Years,” Sandy says. “And this is a Moon’s Year. That’s…it makes sense.”

            North skims his hand over the map, tracing the distance between the moonpools. They’re scattered throughout the whole city. A cheery little note in the corner of the map mentions that visiting them all between dawn and dusk is an ambitious endeavor in walking, but might be a good way to celebrate the Summer solstice.

            “What will happen on the equinox, Sandy? What is your plan? What must we do to make sure that day has meaning? Even if we cannot understand it all.”

            Sandy presses his hands to the table to steady them, but when he speaks, his voice needs no such assistance. “We will begin at dawn, and the end will come at dusk. The first ones to act will be Toothiana and Jack…”

 

            A frown has firmly settled on North’s face by the time Sandy’s finished giving the details of the plan. “Toothiana and Jack may be able to travel easily through tunnels, but if you and Pitch are on the city streets—I must be blunt: there is no way I can see that you will be able to reach every moonpool before dying, especially if you mean to offer an equal portion of your blood to each.”

            “We both have strong magic,” Pitch says, folding his arms. “It will—it must—if there is no other way—sustain us long enough for—for this.”

            “Why not use the tunnels?” North asks.

            “They should be flooded by then, or collapsed,” Jack says. “Or they might be. I’m not sure what my power will do in this case.”

            “I admit that I’m also unsure,” Toothiana says from a place nearer the table, as she’s approached the chronicle seemingly unconsciously. Pitch makes no move to stop or caution her. “As an apprentice of fire, I rarely encountered old workings like you describe.”

            “It’s not just that,” Sandy says. “The parts Toothiana and Jack are to perform may be done in the tunnels because they’re undoing the water working. That’s vital, but the meaning of it doesn’t depend on the location. What Pitch and I will do…this work is all revelation, breaking, and opening. All of it must take place in the sunlight.”

            “Is that right?” North looks from Sandy to Pitch.

            “Yes,” Pitch says. “It makes perfect sense.” He licks his lips nervously and studies the chronicle and the modern map again. “But I think this may…not be all. Sandy, Zalla wrote of the Endless Dance.”

            “She paired it with the Long Song,” Sandy says, looking up at Pitch.

            Pitch nods. “When I was among the shadow adepts, especially…especially when we…dwindled…the Endless Dance was what they spoke of as their reward after death. Then, I thought it strange, for as shadow adepts we did not dance like light adepts sang. And all dances are patterns, and then I still thought all patterns and the understanding of patterns to belong to light adepts in some way, so my comprehension was doubly blocked.

            “Now, though, I wonder if the dances of the shadow adepts were something lost with the knowledge of the source. Patterns need light and dark to be read, and in light, what does a dance do but manipulate a shadow?” He glances away from Sandy, but only for an instant. No time remains for ordinary conversation. No time remains to avoid the sight of his beloved. “And, Sandy, perhaps the dances were lost when the dancers became separated from those who sang the accompanying songs.”

            “What does this have to do with the equinox?” Jack asks, sitting up straighter now, his brows drawn together in concentration.

            “When I was rescuing you, Jack,” Pitch continues, not looking away from Sandy, “I relied more on Shadow than I had in many years. At a few points, in order to avoid guards or others, I found my body moving in certain ways before I consciously willed it. There are shadow patterns I am being called to dance.”

            Sandy gives him a sad smile of comprehension. “The moonpools must be opened not on the fastest route, but according to a pattern.”

            “Yes. A pattern that, since it comes from Shadow, I will not be able to know before I am in the midst of it.”

            North slams his hand on the table, reclaiming Pitch and Sandy’s attention. “That settles it. I do not care how strong you think your magic is, or how much you trust that Light and Shadow will allow you to fulfill your purpose. Since this thing must be done, I say it must not be done with the suffering you imagine. I will drive you from moonpool to moonpool in the automatic carriage.”

            Pitch and Sandy look to each other in surprise, then to everyone else. “I don’t see why not,” Sandy says slowly.

            “It does sound better than _not_ using it,” Pitch says.

            “Thank you,” Sandy says to North. “I think the carriage will help…a very great deal.”

            North looks away and back to the map. “I only wish you would still be around to offer help to after the equinox. But I know enough to save my strength for arguments I know it is right to win.”

            “Aren’t you worried about people seeing you and recognizing you?” Jack asks.

            “Huh! Not really,” says North. “The house is surrounded by a wall of shadow and I am probably fifth most wanted in city only because the four of you take first spots. What is one more complication?”

 

***

 

            “Do you even taste it, now?” Pitch asks, watching Sandy drink the sunset from the palms of his hands. “Does it still lift your heart?”

            Sandy looks over at him, but doesn’t lift his lips from the pool of deep reddish-gold light shimmering on his palms like flames made of water. Only when the last blood-red sliver of sun sinks below the horizon does he lick his hands clean and rise from his knees. He walks the few steps over to Pitch, who stands near a planter overflowing with the thin vines covered in pale yellow blooms.

            “Yes, Pitch. I still taste it.”

            In the lingering dusk Pitch removes his hat, gloves, and glasses. He holds them all in the hand nearest Sandy and waits for him to say more.

            “The intensity of the light never diminishes. That sunset, just now, tasted like roasted apples and smoke. It felt like the exhilaration of breaking glass. But it’s not like before. It doesn’t lead me to dreams, it doesn’t play under my skin. I’m not letting it. I’m telling it to wait, and the light obeys. It sinks into me, every mote of power, and I feel the vastness in the joy of light more than the joy itself.”

            “I long for light-drunk days,” Pitch declares. “I long for the days when you were not the focal point of some great wheel, and your every breath proclaimed the sweet play in light itself.”

            “Very candid tonight, aren’t you?”

            “When else shall I be?”

            Sandy looks up at the few stars that have appeared. “Then I will answer in kind. I believe you are reaching too far back for the days you speak of, into a time that was never what it seemed.”

            “Too far back? I speak of our evening of starlight not three weeks ago.”

            “Now you’re willing to settle for that?”

            “Hmm.” Pitch lets his eyes trace one of Sandy’s golden curls. “No. But those were better days for us than these.”

            “Those were days of sleep,” Sandy says. “Now we wake. Now we will fulfill all the stories told of us, and finally act so truer stories may be told in days hence.”

            “And our story? Light’s promise?”

            Sandy looks up at Pitch, his face no more than a few sketched planes and lines in the fading light. Familiar planes. Familiar lines. Yet for all his familiar humanity, he seems nearly inseparable from the surrounding dusk. “Our story will be fulfilled, too. Pitch…” his voice drops to a whisper, “do you want me to rail against what we must do? Do you want to see my fear? My anger? My doubt and sorrow?”

            “Yes.” The word sounds painful in his throat. “Yes. I want to be the one you trust with those things. You have carried too much yourself.”

            Sandy takes a deep breath. “I never wanted to burden you.”

            “But that’s what people do to each other, Sandy. I’ve seen it, time and time again. And in love they pick up each other’s burdens, or at least they try! I love you like that. I don’t love you like the strangers you give light to love you! I love you as Sandy, not as Light.”

            “And I love you as Pitch. Not as Shadow and not as…that is, in a different way than I loved Kozzy.”

            “You do not mourn him every time you look into my face?” Pitch asks, and Sandy sees the angles move into a smile.

            “Not anymore.” Sandy says. “I would change many things if I could, but not you.”

            “I would see you scream against the things you would change.”

            “I may not scream as much as you think I should. Knowing you would help carry the burden has already made it lighter.”

            “Sandy. I am sure there will be enough. I only want to see you let yourself be human in this.”

            “Very well.” Sandy smiles at Pitch, because when else will he do so? “Let us go in, and I will rage and scream and cry so much that you will barely be able to…” _to keep loving me for three more days_.

            “To what?”

            “Nothing. Something I almost thought was funny.”

            “The light finally hitting you?” Pitch asks.

            “Maybe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shadow adept culture was so damaged by the split, it's really terrible.


	25. The Last Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy makes two things: one of glass, and one of light.

            In the small hot shop near the equally small forge in one of North’s outbuildings, Sandy melts down one of his empty bottles of enchanted glass. He pours molten glass into a flat, rectangular mold and carries it to a cooling oven. The movement is automatic even in the unfamiliar setting, and his hands don’t shake.

             While he waits for the pane to be ready, he gathers more of the glass in the crucible and shapes it into a simple, solid cylinder. After contemplating this shape for several long moments, he frowns, shakes his head, and returns the glass to the furnace. When he shapes it this time, he adds a ring around the base, and five shallow indents. Four along one side, one on the other. This is not automatic, but it calls him to the past rather than the present, and his hands don’t shake.

            When the pane is ready, Sandy asks it a question in Shining he’s only used for utilitarian reasons before. _Then again, what is more useful than what this will do?_ Sandy thinks as he scores the glass and breaks it according to the glass’s answer.

            Like the indented shape, like the bottle it was, the shard is clear as air. Nothing hides within either. In part, Sandy takes this as a good sign. His body disagrees. His hands do shake as he heats one end of the shape and the wider end of the shard.

            He tries to steady himself by singing _My Path is Clear_ , a simple song, never forgotten by any light adept. Yet his lone voice shakes even worse than his hands. He grimaces and falls silent. When he opens his mouth again, the slow, wordless Origin Tones pour out of his throat, steady as the year’s passing and returning him the control of his hands.

            He joins the shape and the shard, and when they become the knife, he keeps singing as he places it in the annealer.

            When it finally feels safe to stop singing—and what can he rely on but feeling, now, with no experience of his own and little of others to draw on?—he hears the door creak softly as someone pushes it open.

            “North told me you were here,” Pitch says. “I heard you singing. But you can’t be gathering light indoors.” Sandy turns to see him shake his head at himself. “What I mean to say is that whatever you do before the equinox, I hope to be with you.”

            “I needed to make the knife,” Sandy says bluntly. “It’s done now, but I think it would have been more difficult with you here. Believe me,” his face softens. “I don’t want to lose any moments we don’t have to.”

            “The—” Pitch can’t force himself to name it, but nods. “Even after last night? You do this…calmly? Singing?”

            “I wouldn’t have been calm without the song,” Sandy explains. “And last night…I don’t know how I could have been clearer, Pitch. I feel many things about what we will do. Yet beneath all my tears and rage, I know it is necessary for the future of magic in this land. And I will play my part in doing what we must.”

            “Doing what only _we_ can do,” says Pitch. “No other light adept would have kept loving a shadow adept like you did me. No light apprentice other than myself would have been foolish enough to do the things that led me to learn shadow called me as well.”

            “I think Shadow called you with the Mercy,” Sandy says quickly, before he can think better of it. “I think the Mercy showed that light and shadow magic stem from the same source, but no one understood, then. But Light and Shadow needed someone who could be part of a pair of opposites. They needed lovers. And they needed your anger. They needed the Nightmare War, they needed the moonpools sealed after we had found one, nosy and lustful and fated, they needed the Dimming. It’s all for undoing the all the history and schisms and erasures, the Academy—everything. And because we love, we are the last before a new era. Just not like we thought.”

            Pitch stays silent for a long moment. “This is the pattern you see.”

            Sandy nods. “I only saw it fully this morning with the light of dawn. Otherwise, believe me, I would have said something about it last night.”

            “Will you now?”

            “I’ve said what I see. And yes, this angers me. But I am letting it go, over and over again, like a torrent from a poisoned spring within my heart. I don’t enjoy being angry. I don’t want to spend my last days in rage. This is my selfishness, Pitch. I know my anger is justified, but it brings me _nothing_. The moonpools _will_ be opened.”

            “As always, your serenity is terrifying,” Pitch says. “I—the pattern you see makes sense. Sun and Moon. Did we ever have any choice?”

            “We had every choice,” Sandy says. “I never consulted Light in any of my choices regarding you.”

            Pitch laughs, just once. “And I certainly never consulted Shadow. And yet we still did what was necessary.”

            “As we yet will. We were deftly chosen.”

            Pitch shakes his head. “I would rage for you, but—you are right. The rage will do no good. I will help you create this new world, Sandy. It’s similar to what I wanted to do when I was young, anyway. I was even prepared to die for that, when I thought myself mortal.” He pauses. “Of course I was,” he mutters.

            “We will make it so the old days of separation can never return,” Sandy says, dipping briefly into the spring of his anger. “And this will _never_ happen again.” When he next speaks, his voice is soft. “Pitch. I want you to see the knife.”

            “I don’t want to see it,” Pitch says. “Show me.”

 

            “You made it to fit my hand,” Pitch says in the sort of flat voice that conceals a scream.

            Sandy nods. “As one of our proxies, this is probably the worst. But at least it is the last.”

            “Proxies…” Pitch repeats.

            “I don’t know if you’ve thought about it yet,” Sandy begins, then hesitates.

            “Thought about what?”

            Sandy fixes his gaze on the knife. “For the sacrifice, the blade must be the only point of contact. Even…even to the last. For this to succeed, I must be entirely light.”

            Pitch trembles, letting waves of grief and anger wash through him and over him. Such emotions are only useful to those with a future, who may find in their expression a way to resolve them. For Pitch all the _I am going to_ statements have been silenced, all the targets of his anger become as untouchable as his lover. “Shall we tell North to make sure we are buried in the same grave?” He asks with all the weariness of five centuries.

            “Wrapped in the same shroud,” Sandy whispers. “When all my light is gone, I will share the darkness with you.”

 

            “If we are to begin breaking the water workings at dawn, Jack and I will have to leave this house late tonight,” Toothiana says, breaking the subdued silence of the evening meal. “Or, no, only I will.” She looks over at Sandy and Pitch. “You said the tunnels seemed clear and undisturbed when you found them. Now that the tunnel entrance below North’s house has been cleared, there should be nothing preventing me from making my way to the farthest moonpools, correct?”

            Sandy nods. “I will give you a flask of light for your journey,” he offers.

            “Save it for Jack,” she says. “I have my fire.” She purses her lips. “While in the center of the city you saw no blockages in the tunnels, but those had been recently been used to steal from the library. I wouldn’t be surprised if more distant tunnels weren’t as clear. I’ll accept the idea of a working made to be permanent, but the tunnels themselves are only brick and earth, yes?”

            “What are you saying?” Pitch asks.

            “I’m saying that I or Jack may need to travel on the surface in some cases. We have maps, so we will not get lost. However, people are looking for us. I don’t know if the equinox celebrations are going to be taking place as usual, or if a state of emergency’s been declared, but either way, if we’re noticed, people will try to detain us.”

            “The tunnels are probably clear,” says Sandy.

            “If not, do what you need to.” Pitch looks to Toothiana and Jack. “Sandy is probably trying to avoid thinking such things because of who he has to be to open the moonpools, but neither of you can be restrained by non-adepts. Yes, even you, Jack, with your untrained power. Do what you have to so you remain free to break the water workings.”

            “That’s fine for you to say to Toothiana,” Jack says. “She has somewhere to go after this is over, no matter what happens. I don’t. And I don’t even know if I can use my power in any of the ways you’re asking me to.”

            “Destruction and leaving are easy,” Pitch says coldly. “You’ll do this unless you want a strange short life full of fearful people never sure whether they want to run their hands all over you because they need magic or behead you because they fear it.”

            Jack pales and sinks back into his chair.

            “We will also have to contend with pursuit,” North says, breaking the pall that came with Pitch’s remarks. “As soon as we are outside the wall of shadow. I am assuming that…you will be needing your magic not to deal with that.”

            “I have several bottles of shadows I no longer need,” Pitch says. “If you pour them out behind your vehicle, even though you aren’t an adept, they should hide our path enough to confuse and delay any pursuit.”

            “No,” Sandy says sharply. “No, that can’t be part of it.” He looks to Pitch. “Concealing our path from our pursuers would also obscure the pattern we’re creating as part of the working. It would damage it.”

            “Damn it, Sandy!” Pitch rakes his hands through his hair. “This working is already calling for your _life_! How could a dram of shadow affect that kind of power? It won’t even be enough to fully draw off the guards, I can tell you that already!”

            “Even the smallest amount of light or shadow can influence great things,” Sandy says. “Speaking in Shining requires _no_ light, and yet the full power of Light stands behind every statement. No shadow will be poured on our path tomorrow.”

            “We have to do _something_ , though,” Pitch says, every line of his body tense as a tightly wound spring. “Shadow may damage the working, but not as much as—as you bleeding out in front of a barricade of guards!”

            “I will do something,” Sandy says. “I am going to make a dream this night, with lightning and starlight. The will and desire of the city will be directed toward power and magic. In every yearning heart, the shape of the pattern we need will be created. We will not fail.”

            “But you have no dreamglass,” Pitch says, though he does not sound as though he doubts Sandy.

            “We have no need of it.” Sandy’s eyes flash with inner light as he looks from Pitch to the others and back again. “The dreamglass tempers and controls the light within it. That is nothing I want done to the dream I will make tonight.”

 

            _Are you sure this is going to work?_ Pitch wants to ask Sandy, but doesn’t. Every move he makes as he gathers the remaining bottles of light and brings them out to the burned entranceway tells him the answer. Sandy’s sure.

            “I’ll brew the dream where Toothiana built her fire,” he had told them. “It’s a place of change, a place that’s a blank slate. It’ll be good for doing something that hasn’t been done in at least a thousand years.”

            Now, he pauses beside Pitch, a bottle of noon light cradled in his hands. The thin coating of silver has chipped away from the neck, and it lights his face eerily from below. He flashes a grin to Pitch, and Pitch can’t help but grin back, though to match Sandy’s expression, his own has to edge towards the feral.

            “It’s all going in, Pitch,” Sandy says, with a light in his eyes wilder than any Pitch’s ever seen in them before. “I am the last light adept, and for over three centuries light has been mine to gather and pour out. But I never felt it until now. I’m finally claiming all the light, and all the dreams. They’re _mine_ , and I’m going to mix them all up, give them all away.” When he meets Pitch’s eyes, his wild look doesn’t mellow, but deepens. It reminds Pitch of the way he looked on the night after he became a full adept, but far older, wiser, and entirely unstoppable. _He looks…immortal_ , Pitch thinks. _Yet in less than a day, we’ll both be dead._ “This is also a gift for you,” he says.

            “Tell me,” Pitch breathes.

            “Light isn’t something that can be stolen. Dreaming isn’t something to be measured out by cups, no matter how rebellious the measurer. When you were whipped by the Mercy, I knew it was wrong, but I thought it was because the dream you made was beautiful and so your transgression should be forgiven. Now I know it was wrong because your punishment placed the dreamglass above the dreamers.” He glances to the ashes, his stance relaxed and calm. “Tonight is for you, and me, and every adept that knew in their hearts that light is not tame, that its peacefulness does not mean it is docile.”

            “Thank you. _Thank you._ Sandy…I wish you could lead the new adepts.”

            “Perhaps it is better that they will have no leader,” Sandy says, his expression turning thoughtful. “Let them speak to themselves in Shining when they face something they don’t understand. There will be light within them. They will be better vessels for light than glass. And…” his voice softens, “all will be well.”

            He uncorks the bottle of light and strides out to the edge of the burned area. He pauses only for the space of one deep breath, settling his feet into the blackened stones, before pouring the light into the air. As it leaves the bottle’s mouth, he begins to chant something that Pitch would swear was both something he had heard many times before and also entirely unfamiliar.

            The light doesn’t even come close to hitting the ground. It flows away from Sandy to form a horizontal plane of brilliance in the air, at about the level of his waist. But—no, not a horizontal plane. A bowl. A very shallow bowl.

            Sandy continues his chant as he marks out a circle with his footsteps, each step almost a stomp into the stones, sending ash flying and claiming this place not just as a ruined drive leading to a fine mansion, but as a part of the land of the Lunar Kingdom. For him, this is no longer North’s land, or the land of the City of the Moon, but the land that holds the magic of light and shadow, the land that will bear it up and release it from now until the end of time.

            He pours the light as he steps, the words of his chant growing sharper as the circle forms. The words and tone of this chant have never been put together in this way before, and Sandy doubts they will be again. The language the new adepts find may be neither Shining nor Erebusian, nor the fusion of the two that graces the moonpools. For now, and only now, he will say what needs to be said in Shining. The words of his chant had never been given the power of melody when he was at the Academy, the spell for making dreamglasses only spoken. Now, it is changed. He chants the old spell but does not trap it in glass, asking it instead to exist, whole and solid, but not restrained by an outside form. He asks it this in intervals almost like the Origin Tones he learned as a child, in intervals that are not like the Origin Tones he learned as a child, as they spring to his throat more easily and fall on his ears more harshly.

            When he completes the circle, the noon light forms a bowl thin as gold leaf and shining like the sun. It is, Sandy realizes, as he steps back to make sure his working has taken, as big as a moonpool. Far larger than the great dreamglass.

            “I know what you’re going to ask,” he says to Pitch as he returns to where he stands by the remaining bottles of light, “but this is only a change for one night, a change for dreams, no matter how brightly it shines. More yet is required to change a world forever.”

            “Sandy,” Pitch says, from behind a scarf, his eyes hidden his dark glasses again, “I can barely look upon this—this dream, for if it is a dreamglass without glass, what else must it be? And still, we are to wield greater power tomorrow?”

            Sandy scratches at the silver coating of a bottle of lightning thoughtfully. “You doubt yourself, if you doubt. But you have weathered uncertainties the likes of which I’ll never know. Your power…I don’t fully understand it. But I know it’s equal to mine, even if it doesn’t always make a show. You are as unstoppable as I am.”

            “Hmm. A disturbing truth for this kingdom, if it was ever to learn it,” Pitch says. “Well, Sandy, I would like to see you weave this dream now.”

            “Be careful.” Sandy smiles at him. “It’s going to be bright.” Bottle of lightning held in one hand, and pulling the cart of lights forward with the other, Sandy walks to the edge of the bowl of light. When he reaches it, he uncorks the bottle of lightning deliberately, yet without ceremony, and pours it smoothly onto the sunlight. The brilliant pale purple of it shines even brighter than its strange vessel, and Sandy nods as it flows to the center. It is fitting that the brightest light he’s ever gathered be used for this. The brightest…and the dimmest. He chases the lightning with starlight.

            These two lights alone could create a powerful dream, a dream too unpredictable for any king. But Sandy knows better. For though the pattern points to only one end tomorrow, he needs more than just starlight and lightning to truly complicate it, to truly draw all hearts of the city and kingdom towards it. He pours bottle after bottle of light into the huge dreamglass-not-of-glass, not caring for how their conventional meanings might clash. All is light, and now, that is all that matters.

            Moonlight from the last waning moon before the spring thaw. Midmorning sunlight from the last day of summer before the nights began to speak of autumn. Full moonlight that shone upon exuberant spring blooms, sunsets that bled over the first snow. Sunlight from the moments before the rain, sunlight from the moments after, sunlight that shone through the rain. All the starlight. All the lightning. The light from his last summer afternoon on the Isle of Dreams. All the dawn, all the sunset. All lights that shine with change, marking turning points in the pattern.

            When he is finished, the bowl of light is filled to within a handspan of its edge. Sandy steps back to look upon it, and he smiles as he sees the lights mix, not to homogeneity as they would with the ordinary dreambrewing spells, but in a mottled pattern forming and re-forming, guided only by the lights themselves. _This_ will be a true light-dream, a light-dream as perhaps they always should have been. But even if when he was the king’s personal dreamweaver he would have not comprehended the necessity of a working like this, it matters no more. The dream is ready now.

            With slowly rising arms and a slowly rising tone streaming from his throat, the light in the bowl drifts upward in a shimmering cloud of every shade of gold. Like a column of luminous smoke, it rises until it is taller than North’s house, then taller yet, till the rippling crown of it surpasses the tallest building in the city. Sandy releases his note, and the column’s edges blur as it begins to dissipate throughout the city, every drop of light seeking some sleeping mind.

            Sandy finds Pitch standing partially concealed from the light by the entryway to the house. “Well, do you like it?” he asks, his voice still ringing with the clarity of the Origin Tones.

            “Like it?” Pitch’s hand drifts towards his glasses and he rests his fingers on the frames, though he does not take them off. “Sandy, it’s like the first time I saw the sea.”

 

            Seraphina turns down her lamp in her rooms above the shop, hoping that her body’s eagerness for rest will transfer to her mind once only the starlight falls through the windows. On any other eve of the equinox, she’d be looking forward to sleeping in on the holiday, to one of her rare chances to wake with Bunny when neither of them have to hurry to their work. But tomorrow is the equinox when Sandy will die, and everything will change.

           

            When she’d told Bunny about what Sandy had said to her when they met in the park, he had taken her hand and sat with her in silence for a few moments before saying anything. “It doesn’t seem real, does it?” He finally said. She shook her head.

            “When I met him I told him he was like something out of a starstory. He still is, I suppose. I just forgot what stories ask of the people in them.”

            Bunny ran his thumb along the side of her hand. “We have legends, among the earth adepts…well, not exactly like this, but close. They wouldn’t end after tomorrow.”

            “But light magic isn’t like earth magic,” Seraphina said.

            “Suppose you’re right.” Bunny looked down at their hands. “Not in the way Sandy would need it to be, anyway.”

 

            “Sera?” Bunny says softly from behind her. “Tomorrow will come whether you sleep or not.”

            She wraps her arms around herself. “Sandy told me to be careful tomorrow. He didn’t say why, because he didn’t know.” She rests her head against the window. “In stories he’s always so sure. About everything. But…oh, who wouldn’t be unsure when they’re about to die?” She exhales sharply “I know my worrying won’t change a thing. But I feel like there’s something I’m not seeing that I should be able to, and I just…wish there was _something_ …” she interrupts her wish with a gasp, raising her forehead from the cool glass and unfolding her arms to undo the latch. “Bunny! Look!”

            He wraps an arm around her waist as they both lean out the window, knowing that if she wasn’t in front of him he’d be just as much in danger of falling out as she is. Above the city, there’s something happening in the night sky, the likes of which neither of them has ever seen before. At first, the bright glow sends a sickening jolt of fear through Bunny, as it brings to mind yet another fire, larger than the one before, but after a few moments of looking it becomes clear that what’s out there now has nothing to do with something so ordinarily terrifying.

            “Sun and Moon,” Seraphina breathes as she watches the bright cloud spread from the west side of the city to slowly drift towards its center. It’s sunlight-bright, and moonlight-pure, and there’s something about it that reminds her of both thunderstorms and stars. Though when she first spotted it, it hovered high above the city, as she and Bunny watch it they can see it dissipate and descend. Faint trails of light soon link the cloud to many of the buildings below, and Seraphina gives a little gasp. “Bunny, I think I know what this is,” she says softly, gripping his arm.

            “Light magic, right?” Bunny asks. “I’ve never seen anything like the scale of this…and it’s not just a light show, right, it’s got to be for something, and he’s just one person, that’s not something they teach you how to do in school, no way, and…” he trails off as Seraphina reaches behind her to touch his face and he realizes he’s been babbling.

            “Yes, light magic,” she says. “But more than that, Bunny…I think it’s a dream.”

            “We’ve never seen dreams like that.”

            “But Sandy was always away on his island,” Seraphina says, her eyes fixed on the golden wall of cloud approaching them. “Now he’s here. In our city. And this is…this is his last chance to give us a dream.” She pushes back against Bunny until they’re both more solidly inside and turns to face him. “We need to dream that dream, Bunny.” She grips his forearms. “For Sandy’s sake.”

            “We’re going to need to fall asleep quick,” Bunny says, looking over her shoulder at the fast-approaching cloud. “And it’s not a sight that’s making me drowsy.”

            Seraphina looks back at the cloud and allows herself a sigh of longing. It’s beautiful in a way she’s never seen before, beautiful in a way she’s afraid she’ll never see again. There’s still so much she doesn’t understand, and more than ever _for_ her to understand. That cloud of light rose from a wall of darkness. Somehow, her shadowed relation plays a part in the wonder of tonight. She wants to understand, but what will happen to him, with Sandy gone? Will he too disappear into the world like a story disappears into silence? No doubt he’ll go where she can’t follow, ordinary as she is.

            “We have to try,” she says softly. “Light has a language but no one speaks it any more. I think this dream holds the only way we can understand anything.” She pulls the window almost shut, but not quite, and takes Bunny by the hand, leading him toward her bed.

            Under the flower-patterned quilt, Seraphina rests her head against Bunny’s warm shoulder. “When I first met him,” she murmurs, “he said something about love and work. That the living couldn’t escape them. I wonder if he’s putting all the love and work he’d ever feel or do into this dream.”

            Bunny’s eyes, which have been drifting closed, reopen as hers close. “Love? No…I think…I’d think he’d save a little love if he could, for someone…” he doesn’t finish the thought. It’s too absurd, he must be half-dreaming already, sleep coming easier than he ever thought it would as the glow outside increases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seraphina and Bunny still don't know that Pitch and Sandy are lovers, though by this time it's pretty clear that they're *something*.
> 
> Also, it's very unusual in light adept culture for Sandy to have never tried consulting Light at all in regard to the person he loves. As in, it's sort of extremely arrogant and the kind of thing that ends in disaster in light adept stories and legends.


	26. The Opening of the Moonpools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the moonpools are opened. All eyes in the city are opened, save for two pairs that close.

            “What are you going to wear?” Pitch asks Sandy in their last few hours of night. Neither of them have slept, but neither have they talked much. Before this parting, they do not need memories of the other. They will not meet again.

            Sandy laughs. “I hadn’t even thought about it. Hmm.” He leans back in one of North’s luxurious armchairs. “I don’t think I packed anything with much symbolic weight. And the new clothes I bought certainly don’t hold any meaning. What are _you_ going to wear?”

            Pitch gestures to himself as he is. “I only have my ordinary clothes. Sturdy, modern, somewhat travel-worn…and all in black. I’ll have my broad-brimmed hat. Not the glasses, I think. I think I’ll need to see everything that happens…clearly.”

            Sandy nods. “I think I’ll wear my work clothes that I wore on the island. I know I packed them with everything when we left Fountain Square. I’ll wear them because they’re mine, and I chose them only for myself…I think it’s good that we’ll be doing this in our ordinary clothes.”

            “Why is that?”

            “Because that’s revelatory too. Because we aren’t the ones doing this only because we’re a light and shadow adept, we’re doing this because we’re _us_ , and that was what Light and Shadow needed. Not anyone archetypical. Two workers.”

            “We are somewhat archetypical,” Pitch says.

            “But we’re _also_ us.” Sandy gives him a small smile. “Do archetypes have idiosyncratic and endearing ways of drinking tea?”

            “Stop,” Pitch says, sending Sandy a wavering smile in return. “I suppose next you’ll tell me that archetypes don’t have favorite pastries.”

            “Exactly,” Sandy says.

            “Let’s raid North’s kitchen,” Pitch says after a moment of silence. “Like we would…no, I can’t say…”

            “Like we would before exams at the Academy,” Sandy finishes.

            Pitch groans and covers his face.

            “Come on,” Sandy says, jolting the back of the sofa Pitch lies on. “It’s a good idea, Pitch. There won’t be any time after sunrise and well…why not?”

 

            “It’s almost time to wake North,” Sandy says, licking sugar from his lips.

            “So it is.” Pitch gazes at him over a scattering of half-finished cups of tea. As soon as each had cooled, he’d made himself a new one. It had been no time to bother with tepid tea.

            “Pitch.” Sandy takes a deep breath and looks at him. “I don’t know if this needs to be said, or if it should be said, but I want to say it. With every moment that is…the last of this, or the last of that…I keep looking at you, and thinking to myself, this is the moment when we kiss. This is the moment when we kiss and it all goes away.

            “Because that’s how starstories end, isn’t it? So many of them. The lovers, having gone through trouble, reunite, and they kiss, and the trouble and the story are over. And with our ending coming closer…when I spend the time with you, Pitch, preparing for it, the part of me that is only me insists that we have gone through enough, that now is the moment for the kiss that frees us from our story. A kiss, and not a knife.

            “I want that kiss,” Sandy says frankly. “When I warned you away all those times, it wasn’t because I had stopped wanting you as much as I always have.”

            _It’s not too late_ , Pitch realizes he could say. _It’s not too late. Kiss me. I’ll force the touch you want. I’ll darken you. We could leave this miserable land full of secrets, hope that Jack and Toothiana’s efforts have opened the moonpools enough._ “I love you, Sandy,” he says. How could he dare to think of darkening him? Was his life worth the loss of his magic? _No,_ say all his memories. He himself had dared to allow shadow to choose him just to continue to have a community of magic, even when he was so young. To close light magic to Sandy, _Sandy_ , who was no potential shadow adept, would be to condemn him to a living death,  with no way to do the good he wished. How long could Sandy stand Pitch’s embrace if Pitch did that to him? Sandy, who never pushed him to be anything other than Pitch Black, shadow adept.

            Pitch asks nothing of Sandy now. He has always known and loved him as Master Sandren, light adept, and so he ever will. Even…even at the last.

 

            “It’s time,” Pitch says to North. North nods and steps out of his room, already fully dressed.

            “Did you sleep?” asks Sandy.

            “Yes.” North folds his coat over his arm. “Come. The carriage is this way. Ah, but wait…do you…” he looks from one to the other. “Do you have everything you need?”

            Pitch opens his coat and unwraps a heavy black cloth to reveal the glass knife. “Do you understand what you’ve agreed to do? When you see me use this, you can’t…you can’t stop. You’ll have to keep driving. And be willing to listen to me when I tell you which moonpool we need to go to.”

            “At the end, you may need to help carry me,” Sandy says, quietly. “I probably won’t be able to walk to the wells myself. If you hadn’t agreed to help…but, no…Pitch would be weakened too, by then.” Sandy shakes his head. “Maybe this is why we didn’t figure things out for centuries after the Dimming. The pattern was waiting for the autocarriage.”

            “I pledge that I will do whatever I need to do.” North places his hand flat on his chest and bows. “I…I do not know what else to say.”

            Sandy takes his hand in both of his own. “Promise me that when this is done, you’ll drink the moonpool water every day. I think it will help you.”

            North nods once more, and continues to lead them towards the carriage.

            “North,” Sandy asks, as he unlocks the last door. “You said you slept. Did you dream?”

            “Yes.” North opens the door. “I did dream.”

            “If you would like to tell me what you dreamt, I would like to hear it,” says Sandy.

            “I dreamt…” he closes his eyes. “I dreamt of a tower falling. No. Not falling. Being destroyed. I was with a great crowd of people, and we all had carried heavy sledgehammers, and we were beating the tower down. And I was glad at this, though when I looked at the bricks we were breaking I noticed that they were very fine bricks. But when I stopped looking at the broken bricks and looked at the hole I had broken in the wall, I saw that the tower was full of a forest.” He opens his eyes and looks at Sandy curiously. “It was the same forest I dreamed of when I was a child on the shores of the Cloudsea, far away from any dreams that reached the City of the Moon. The same forest that I knew only from starstories, with lush, broad-leaved trees tall enough to touch the sky, so unlike the short and gnarled pines that grew on those northern shores.” He gives Sandy a small smile. “What do you think of that?”

            “I think it is a good dream,” Sandy says.

 

            North drives them slowly to the edge of the wall of shadow. They pass through the place where the basin of light had rested in the air only hours ago. Now, again, there is nothing more but scorched gravel. “It doesn’t seem right that nothing should remain,” Pitch says.

            “But it was a dream.” Sandy looks away from the drive and up at the sky. The stars fade as the soft gray of the dawn prepares the way for a bright, clear day. “It shouldn’t have been permanent.”

 

            “Jack and Toothiana should have cracked the water working on many of the moonpools by now,” North says as they pause before the gate.

            “And we can only hope that our sequence doesn’t bring us to one they haven’t gotten to yet,” Pitch says, his voice hollow. “I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t we think of that?”

            “Pitch.” Sandy looks back at him, perched in an extra seat North had quickly added to the top of the autocarriage’s body yesterday. In a white-knuckled grip, he holds a large packet of clean white bandages, intended to staunch Sandy’s bleeding between moonpools. “Jack and Tooth have had all night to do what they needed to do. And even though we don’t know the sequence yet…Shadow doesn’t want us to fail. You’re not fighting your nature by doing this, Pitch. Everything that is about to happen…we just need to let it flow.”

            “I assure you, I _am_ fighting my nature by taking part in this,” Pitch says. He takes a deep breath. “But not the part of me that is Shadow. Only the part of me that I am ever used to defeating.” He puts on his broad-brimmed hat.

            Sandy presses his hand to the back of his seat near Pitch’s foot before turning to North. “In moments sunrise will begin, and I will start singing my song. Pitch will part the wall of shadow then, and direct you where you must go. I don’t know how my song might affect you. It’s to be a song of power, and it’s meant to resonate through the whole city. If today is to be worth anything, I won’t be able to stop. I think that the song will be beautiful, but you must not listen if it distracts you.”

            “I promise I am ready, as much as I can be,” North says, flexing his hands, so recently burned with one kind of magic and healed with another, on the controls.

            “Then, while my voice is still free,” he turns back to Pitch, “I love you. _I love you_.”

            “And I love you, Sandy. Sandy. You have never left my thoughts, and you never will.”

            For the space of a few breaths, no more, the three wait at the wall of shadow, the rumble of the autocarriage thrumming against birdsong and the faint sound of a cool breeze through the turning leaves of the trees.

            And then, with a certainty Sandy and Pitch feel within the pulsing of their blood, as they have felt it for the past five centuries, sunrise is upon them. With a few gestures made with more care than he would ever have devoted to such a simple thing before, Pitch opens the wall of shadow. At the same time, Sandy takes a deep breath and releases the first note of his last song, his last working of revelation, his voice buoyed up by all the brilliant power he has stored up within himself over these past few days.

            The note rings out unbearably clear, sounding more like a bell than a human voice, and even Pitch can barely hear the beginning of a word contained in the long tone as he leans forward, claps his hand over North’s right ear, and hisses into his left, “drive forward. Now.”

            North shakes himself and shifts the autocarriage into gear, scanning the street outside his property, looking for militia to dodge and barricades to break through.

            To his astonishment, their way opens clear before them. Tents, supply carts, and horses for a group of perhaps forty royal militia members cluster around the gate, but no militia are in sight. The only barricade across the street is a line of flimsy wooden sawhorses, looking more like a means to warn onlookers away rather than to physically prevent crossing. And even two of these have been pulled aside just enough to allow North to drive through freely.

             He glances up at Pitch for an explanation, but Pitch only shakes his head. “Keep going,” he says, his words barely audible above Sandy’s song. “They must still be asleep and dreaming.” The words fall from his lips like stones, as if the language he speaks is unfamiliar to him. He stares out at some point ahead of them, his eyes focused on something more distant than anything North can see. He leans toward Sandy ever so slightly, and North shivers. In the past few days they’d been ever so careful about keeping their distance from each other, and as he understands it, that distance is most crucial now. But he understands why Pitch leans toward Sandy, yes, even Pitch, even Pitch, who has his own powerful magic. It’s all North can do to stop himself from dropping his controls and reaching over to place his hands on Sandy’s shoulders.

            The magic that Sandy sings is unlike anything North’s heard or felt before. It feels like a wellspring, it feels like a source of something North had been missing all his life. If Sandy hadn’t told him personally that the source was in the moonpools, North wouldn’t believe it now. How could anything but Sandy be the source, Sandy, who nearly seemed to glow under his simple clothing, Sandy, whose voice seemed to shake all the dullness from his mind and replace it with pure wonder.

            Pitch puts his hand on North’s shoulder. “You must…” he speaks as though struggling to recall the words, “you must…focus. You need to have…more than one thought now. And…turn to the north, as soon as you can.”

 

            As he sings, Sandy drinks in everything of the morning around him: the absent guards, the brightening sky, the sunlight hitting the golden limestone of the buildings looking as liquid as if it needed no light adept to make it so, the glitter of the dew and the rumble of the autocarriage under him. He takes it in, and under the light and in the light and echoing the light that he sings, it is all beautiful, all unbearably beautiful, but as he sings, he finds he no longer aches to keep it. As he sings, it will all flow through him. He does not need to bring the beauty of this world to the Long Song. He will have it in his song, and that must be enough. Some part of him that seems distant from the song in his mouth notes wryly that this has given him a selfish reason to never cease singing, but he lets that thought flow away too. There is only the song now, and what he wills the city will know, no matter what wills opposed, oppose, or will oppose such knowing, forever and ever.

 

_Light and Shadow are one and the same_

_They spring from the pools that bear the moon’s name_

_Always and ever this water must flow_

_For each and for all, for high and for low_

_City of the Moon! This is your water!_

_Lunar Kingdom! This is your water!_

_Land of the Serene! This is your water!_

_This is your water! This is your source!_

_This your birthright!_

_As sure as you are born from the darkness of the womb_

_As sure as your infancy is filled with revelation of the world_

_As sure as your life will teach something to others_

_As sure as you will rest in the darkness of the grave_

_The power of this land is not light alone_

_Shadow is its equal_

_For every full moon there is a new_

_Let the pools reflect this!_

_Let the pools reflect this in truth!_

 

            “Here,” Pitch says, the word dragging from his throat. “The first place…is here.” He forces himself to look out at the street as North brings the autocarriage to a stop in front of the well house. This isn’t one of the festival streets, and it’s still early, so there isn’t a crowd, but, no matter what else they’re doing, they’re going to a well early in the morning, and there are more than a few people around.

            Sandy steps down from the autocarriage, his song softer now, and more complicated. He still sings in Shining, but between the long notes and the words he’s chosen, Pitch finds it impossible to translate. But no one needs to understand the words of his song to him to be unmistakable as the Dreamweaver, though the people have never seen him like this before.

            The people in the street start to move toward the autocarriage, not as though they plan to detain North or Pitch, as the papers have demanded, but as if they cannot help themselves, as if they are sleepwalking.

            Pitch lurches out of his seat, turning to North as soon as he’s gained his footing on the cobblestones. “North. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen once Sandy’s blood is spilled, but I think this crowd will know that I’ve done it. Please, please be ready to drive quickly.”

            North nods, and looks as though he’s about to ask a question, but he only says, “Go. I will make this day what it must be.”

            Pitch takes a deep breath and grips his coat at its hidden pocket. “Because he asked when he wasn’t singing,” he murmurs, and strides into the well house.

            Inside, Sandy stands with his left arm exposed to the brilliant rays of dawn that break through the small, high windows. He holds it over the water, fist clenched, while his other hand grips the warm stone of the well itself. And still he sings.

            Pitch doesn’t hesitate before bringing the bundle that holds the glass knife from his coat, nor do his hands shake as he unwraps it. If he is to do as Sandy has asked, he must do it wholeheartedly. The tremor that shakes him when he grasps the handle, he allows, knowing that Sandy would not want anything about this day to be hidden. The tremor ceases, though, when he meets Sandy’s eyes, and sees the faintest flicker of fear within them, a flicker no doubt mirrored and magnified in his own. To his astonishment, knowing that Sandy is afraid calms him. Seeing that fear seems to reassure him that Sandren and Kozzy are still here today, within light and shadow, still in full possession of human doubt.

            It gives him the strength to do what he would not do for Light itself.

 

            Jack slumps on an ice-covered piece of broken stone, the bottle of light Sandy gave him resting on another fragment in front of him. In its illumination, he pours over his map of the moonpools again. Thirteen. He had marked each one after, _only_ after he had done what he could. Thirteen. He had done his part. He had done what he needed to so the light adepts could come back.

            He leans his head back and lets his eyelids droop. It’s not very comfortable, sitting on roughly-broken rocks, but after the long, long night Jack feels as though he could fall asleep anywhere. He lightly rubs his fingers against the stone, feeling the ice gradually melt away.

            Thirteen. Thirteen times he had run up to a patch of stone in the brick tunnels, knowing he had arrived at a moonpool, able to trust only the steadiness of his steps and the needle of his compass to tell him _which_ moonpool he had arrived at. He hadn’t run into Toothiana, though. That had to be a good sign. Not a sign that she had run into trouble and he had pointlessly broken into thirteen random moonpools. His stomach churns at the thought, but only for a moment. _I must be too exhausted even to worry_ , he thinks distantly. But it’s all right, it must be all right. Everything else can wait. His mind wanders, and he doesn’t attempt to stop it. If he can’t even worry, surely his powers must be drained as well.

            The stone walls had been easy to break, already somewhat porous and full of water to freeze. And, Jack supposes, it was easy because he believed he could break things. He believed he could be a force of destruction.

            He hadn’t known what to expect, of course, after the breaking of that first wall under North’s house, the opening of that first moonpool passage. He had expected some strangeness, of course, but not the familiarity. When he stepped into that first moonpool chamber, the soft light of the water had jolted him as though it was a lightning strike, making every hair stand on end and setting his ears ringing with the force of centuries of pent-up magic. It felt like Pitch and Sandy’s argument in North’s house, multiplied a thousandfold, and for several moments he had no idea how he was supposed to find a water working, how he was supposed to find _anything_ in a place like this. And then, in the midst of all the sensations-that-weren’t, all the terrifying onrush of power that couldn’t possibly be coming from something as simple as a faintly glowing, faintly rippling, pool of water, Jack had sensed something that seemed like himself.

            He had reached out to it with his mind and spirit like a drowning person would reach out to a helping hand, trying to shelter himself in whatever it was, this first thing in all the City of the Moon, in all his memories, that seemed to reassure him that his magic wasn’t a unique, freak occurrence, but part of something just as large as Light or Shadow. And like a drowning person pulling their rescuer down with them, as soon as Jack had pulled the familiar-feeling magic towards him, the strength of it diminished. Still, even then, some of the familiarity settled into him and helped him think more clearly, and he understood that he had very likely just done what he was meant to do, all unknowing. His lack of skill with magic like his own but not his own meant that he didn’t know how to touch the water-working without breaking it.

            After that, he had stumbled out of the moonpool chamber, feeling weary and sick at heart. He had worked some magic in there, he knew, for the heaviness that settled into his limbs was that which only followed the times when he was allowed to use his magic. But whatever magic he had worked had been worked ignorantly and clumsily, just as all his magic had always been, despite how impressive the king had once claimed his manipulations of ice were. Was this what magic was always going to be like for him? Fumbling in the dark, poorly restraining powers he didn’t understand, doing both good and ill only by accident, and only when either relied on destruction, easy as Pitch had said it would be? The lands of the water adepts were half a world away, and after this first encounter with water magic, could he dare to go to them? He’d probably be even more dangerous to them than he was to the people of the Lunar Kingdom.

            He leaned against the brick of the tunnel, staring into the darkness ahead. The safest thing to do would be to remain alone in his magic forever. The weight of that thought, after the familiarity he had felt in the moonpool chamber, threatened to crush him like the tons of earth and rock above his head.

            “Alone,” he whispered. In that word, the world seemed bounded for him within the little pool of light Sandy’s bottle created for him. Sandy.

            “Alone!” he shouted, pushing himself away from the wall. What had he been thinking, standing around feeling sorry for himself? Of course it was terrible to be alone in magic, but he had only borne the feeling for months. There hadn’t been other light adepts for centuries. And at dawn, Sandy was going to give his own life to make sure that there would be light adepts in the future, and that they would never end up alone. And Sandy was relying on Jack to make sure that his sacrifice was worthwhile. And for that, Jack didn’t need to be anything other than what he was tonight. He would have plenty of time to worry about the water adepts later. Sandy had only one day to worry about the light adepts.

            He retrieved the map of the moonpools from his pocket along with his compass and charcoal pencil. He made a check mark by the pool where North’s house was, and noted which direction the tunnel would lead him. He shook the heaviness from his limbs and set off down the tunnel in a dead sprint. He might not know how to solve his own loneliness, but he knew exactly what to do to solve that of future others, and in this he refused to fail.

            Now, he supposes he ought to climb up the stairs and exit through the trapdoor into whichever well house he’s under, but with every minute he rests, the idea loses urgency. He’s done his part. North, the only friend he can count on, will be busy at least until sundown, and probably later. Sandy’s sacrifice isn’t going to go unnoticed. He guesses that whatever happens is going to turn the city upside down even more than the summer blizzard he caused.

            And on top of all that, he’s no doubt still wanted for…well, nothing he actually did that was wrong, but how could the king end up happy about magic after whatever happened today?

            Not to mention, he doubts he has the strength to push up the stone block that serves as a trapdoor. He barely feels he has the strength to climb the stairs.

            But if he’s to be absolutely honest with himself, as he is while his eyes drift close and don’t open, it isn’t just exhaustion that keeps him below the city. It is also fear. He’s afraid of seeing Sandy’s face as he makes his sacrifice; he’s afraid of seeing Pitch’s. Everything will happen now whether he sees it or not. He’s done his part. He’s done his part. He’s done his part…

            The stone he’s sitting on reverberates with one deep, low vibration that makes Jack think of music, though the instrument that produced a tone like that would have to be the size of the world. He pushes himself to his feet, glancing warily at the tunnel ceiling. In his patchy memory he knows what earthquakes are, but he can’t remember if they’re common in the City of the Moon or not. But then again, even if they aren’t, today’s not a day for common things.

            He reasons that the moonpools have stood longer than the tunnels, no matter what’s happened in the city, so he picks his way through the broken stone and back to the chamber. As soon as he’s inside and in view of the water, though, he’s forced to a halt. The feeling of unfamiliar magic presses in upon him even stronger than it did before, and not the faintest hint of the water working remains. The water of the pool itself is no longer only faintly luminous. Now, it is bright as a full moon, and, to Jack’s uncomprehending gaze, seems to have a star etched upon its surface. After a long moment, he realizes that the water level has dropped, and is dropping yet further, the star pattern revealing the locations of the openings into which some old, old magic rapidly draws the water.

            Unsure yet whether this means he should stay or go, the next change decides him. A roiling begins in the center of the pool, and the water level ceases to drop and starts to rise—and rise quickly. Jack can only guess that some magic that had before only touched the water-drawing system finally reached the spring Sandy said was in the center of each moonpool. He also guesses that the spring is now going to do its best to quench a city that’s been thirsty for almost five hundred years.

            He doesn’t have the strength to make himself run out of the chamber, but he leaves as fast as he can, carefully passing through the broken wall, since he knows if he trips he probably won’t be able to push himself back up. He crawls up the stairs on his hands and knees, only realizing once he’s at the block of stone that serves as a trapdoor that he’s had Sandy’s bottle of light in his pocket since he was in the moonpool chamber, the light from the water shining smoothly through the short turn of the hallway as if it’s already liquid with no intervention from a light adept. As he pauses, the light almost seems to shine through him, and in his exhaustion he has no idea if that’s something he wants to happen to him or not. He can’t remember ever feeling this overwhelmed, not even by his own powers, and he wishes desperately he had more memories to draw from.

            But then again, at this moment, strength might be a little more important than memories. He lifts his hand to the stone over his head. At some point, people without magic had put it in place.

            But ordinary or not, they had put it in place to _stay_. Jack sags against the stairs. There’s no water in the mortar like there had been in the other wall. The floor of the well house had been constructed with much greater skill. His magic, as he knows it, won’t help him move the rock. And even if he understood how, is he really supposed to be able to freeze his way out of this when he can’t even sit up straight?

            The light on the stairs brightens and Jack looks down without much surprise to see the moonpool water rapidly rising over the first few steps. So that’s it. He’s going to drown underground. It’s a strange death, but for the months he can remember, Jack’s never thought of himself as someone who’d be able to die of anything like old age. And his death won’t be the strangest today.

            He rests his head against the stairs. He feels like he ought to prepare himself somehow, but he has no idea where to begin. Has he lived harmoniously? Is there anything he’s kept hidden that he needs to reveal? Even if there is, there’s no one around to tell those things to. Do water adepts even join the Long Song? He doesn’t know anywhere else to try for. “Maybe Sandy can pick up my ghost on the way,” he says softly.

            When the water begins to lap against the soles of his shoes, he takes them off. It seems right, to feel this strange power against his skin, to remove any artificial barrier he might place against it. The water is cool at first, but as it rises to his ankles it starts to feel delightfully warm. It might be very nice indeed, if there was any indication that it would stop rising. “But today’s not a day for nice,” he says aloud. He traces his finger around the edge of the trapdoor. Sandy had said something about this being a day of healing for the city. And hadn’t Pitch said something about water adepts usually being trained in healing? “I guess I’m a real water adept, then, because I helped the healing.”

            He imagines the water, almost blinding in its brilliance now and well up to his thighs, pushing his body and the trapdoor block up into the well house with the inexorable force of everything the city’s been longing for without knowing it for so long. The water needs to flow everywhere, it needs to wash the city, even the well, if it overflows, won’t be enough, this water needs every outlet…

            The stone shifts under his hand and he jumps back, falling into the luminous water. In its light, he can clearly see a crack around the block. His thoughts race. This was his doing. His. How? Healing. He had thought of himself as a water adept. Thought that water adepts heal. Thought how the block moving would help heal the city. But now what? The water is still rising, and he still doesn’t have the strength to push out the block.

            He tries anyway, his wet hands sliding against the stone. He can tell it _would_ move, if he could muster enough force. But there’s no time. Standing on the steps with his head against the stubborn block, only it and his shoulders remain above the water. “No!” he tries to shout, surprised at both how weak and how indignant his voice sounds. But why shouldn’t he be indignant? _I understood what it meant to be a water adept, I understood that I really am a water adept, and not only that, but I helped heal my own city. My city of light and shadow._ “I don’t want to die,” he says. “The city doesn’t need me dead and I’m not going to die!”

            He doesn’t know how he’s not going to die, but he doesn’t have a lot left to plan with. Surely they must add up to only one course of action. He has his thoughts of healing the city. He has the remnants of his magic. He has a bottle of light and luminous water all around him.

            There is no more time to be afraid of magic that isn’t his. He bends his face to the water and drinks deeply.

 

            Toothiana hurries away from the last moonpool and the last water-working she broke, wool scarf wrapped tightly around her face. It feels like smothering and sets her heart racing, but it’s better than being trapped underground with all that water.

            It hadn’t been like she’d expected it to be, based on her brief conversations with Sandy and Pitch before she entered the tunnels. They had both spoken as if the water working preventing the moonpool water from rising to the surface as moonpool water was something of a matter of curious pipes, but as soon as she had broken into a chamber, she could tell, strange as it might seem, that both light and shadow adepts had been underestimating the power of their source and the power needed to contain it. If either of them had ever seen the Heartflame Pit, they would not have portrayed the task of breaking the working that closed their source as something so straightforward.

            In the strange magic, she had been unable to keep lit the flame she had used to light her way. In the strange magic, it had not mattered, for the power from the moonpool gave light enough. The moonpool! A reservoir of pure power in the form of water, a reservoir of power that refused to be changed even when every adept that drank from it denied half its nature, and now it seemed to threaten to wash over and extinguish her forever, though no waves troubled the softly glowing surface. This was no place for a fire adept; this was no place for change.

            And yet: some change had been wrought here, and after the first few overwhelming moments, it caught her mind like a miss-shelved book would catch her eye. Yes. Change was here where it should not be, continuous change where it should not be, change that sent water up to the well and magic back to the chamber. The magic of _that_ , though it was change itself, seemed ever more strange and inimical to her, and she guessed at once that it was the water working.

            So how must she break it? The answer, of course, was to change the change. There were no pipes to burst here. She simply had to make the anomalous magic into something other than what it was. After she had understood that, the task had almost been too simple. Breaking into the chambers themselves; getting oriented again and again in the face of the contained magic of the pools; both those tasks required more effort than her main mission. Still, after leaving each moonpool, she was always certain that the water working no longer functioned in the way its casters had intended.

            So now, thirteen pools later, she makes her way briskly through the mostly-empty streets, easily avoiding the few people out and about so soon after daybreak, confident that she had done what was needed, and just as confident that she shouldn’t linger near the well house with the upturned block of stone revealing stairs down to the moonpool. The people around might not know to ask her questions, but since she really doesn’t have any safe answers, she doesn’t want to risk it.

            Part of her feels as though she’s wandering through the city at random, though a deeper part of her knows that can’t be the case, not on a day like today. The whole city balances on a tipping point of transformation, and even if the transforming magic has nothing to do with fire, it’s still nothing she can ignore, even if she wanted to.

            She doesn’t want to. Even after her own transformation, this is still her city, the city she has chosen, and just as she chose it she also chose to be part of its transformation into what it could be and what it should be. She lets herself be drawn southward, deeper into the heart of the city.

            Soon, she finds herself walking along the bank of the Serene, her pace slowing as the holiday crowds grow thicker. This year, the atmosphere around the artisans’ stalls strikes her as distracted, the owners of the booths not calling out the fineness of their wares, the people buying the little decorative lanterns, handheld fireworks, and huge, hefty candles to burn from dusk till dawn not making careful selections.

            “Did you see?” One woman says to another in hushed tones.

            “I don’t know what I saw,” says the other as the gold-colored candle she’s just purchased is wrapped in paper. “But I saw something. It reminded me of—of last night’s dreams. Those weren’t normal, you know.”

            “So you don’t think they mean that the Dreamweaver’s back safe at the palace, like the special paper said?”

            “Elena, I don’t think the Dreamweaver’s _ever_ wanted to be safe at the palace. Otherwise why would he have lived on that island so long? And how safe is the palace anyway, when someone can just walk up and set the whole thing aflame?”

            Toothiana moves away and further down the bank. Special paper? What can the king and his counselors be thinking? Isn’t it obvious that the situation is out of their control by now? It would make just as much sense for them to take personal credit for the weather.

            “…had to pull my cart through water up to my knees on the way here,” one of the boothkeepers says to a customer. “I’m just lucky I went into the tin lantern business rather than the fireworks line. I’d have ruined half my merchandise.”

            “Water? From where?” the customer asks, picking up a palm-sized hexagonal lantern with a pattern of stars punched into its sides, but not looking at it. “It hasn’t rained in days, and the Serene’s certainly not flooding, otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here.”

            “I don’t rightly know,” the boothkeeper says, nudging a few lanterns on her table into a more orderly pattern. “But it didn’t show any signs of stopping, even if it did get shallower after a bit. And it didn’t…worry me, I suppose you might say. I know that a couple feet of water, or more, isn’t going to do much for everybody’s things, but,” her voice drops, “something about it made me think of the dream I had last night. And when I was wading through it, it felt…thrilling. Thrilling, that’s the word. Like a thunderstorm, when you’re a kid and don’t have to worry about fixing the roof. Cause when you’re a kid you think that the thunderstorm’s a lot better than the roof, anyway, and maybe it is. And of course thunderstorms are new when you’re that young, and this was really, really new. That water was clear as crystal running through the streets, and even in the nicest parts of town that’s about as expected as the moon staying full for a month.”

            “Were people drinking the water? Did you?”

            “They were…” the boothkeeper looks back down the street from whence she came. “I didn’t, though. Maybe I was too worried about my roof.”

            _You’ll get a second chance_ , Tooth thinks as she hurries away from the festival marketplace, no longer letting herself be guided by light or shadow or her own instincts. Trickles of water that glimmers in the sunshine far more than it should already weave their way through the dust of the gutters, flowing towards the Serene as all water in the city eventually does.

            She plans to be far away from the river when that happens, though not because she fears this water, out in the light and air. No longer trapped underground, she understands that of all water, this is the least likely to douse her, even if she was truly a living flame.

            No, she plans to be far away from the river because while Sandy and Pitch have their vital roles to play, she has something she must do as well—against her nature as preservation has become.

 

            As she approaches the campus of the Great Library, she finds herself splashing through clear, warm, water, then wading through it, and finally laboring against a current that washes over her knees with every step. By the time she nears the Tooth Palace, it’s barely possible for her to stand still, much less move forward in the water. She climbs onto the decorative walls of the flowerbeds, submerged by only an inch or two, and runs forward to make up for lost time, forcing herself to keep her eyes on her goal and not the patterns formed by the drops that splash from her feet and land in the flood with significance she is aware of but cannot read.

            The garden walls leave a river of air-clear danger between her and the entrance of the Tooth Palace, the water flowing out from the frame of the ancient monster’s jaw most quickly here, as if the long-dead creature is singing it without stopping for breath.

            But she must get inside. _Change_ , she thinks. _Change is my power, the power of fire, what can I change to get inside?_ She glances down at the water roiling past her only for an instant. If she was five hundred years a fire adept, she might have been able to change its course enough for her to walk inside on dry ground. But she has barely been a fire adept five days and her body already aches in protest against her wakeful night in the tunnels. Her head buzzes with weariness, the newness of her magic, and the rushing of the water, which feels so like transformation, but a transformation too large for her new awareness to easily accept.

            No, the outside world is beyond her power now. But. But she can change herself, just enough. She grins as she pauses on the garden wall, preparing for what she must do. Her body isn’t going to like this, but at least she’s not wearing her narrow-sleeved Director’s garb.

            She crouches low, making sure to keep her hands above the water. They’re going to need to be dry for this. Then, moving too fast for doubt, she leaps across the pathway, out over the water, suspended for a moment almost in flight. She has the strength to make this leap. She has the strength to make this leap. She will not fall and be washed away.

            “Ha!” she gasps, or laughs, or groans, when she finds she’s right. She slams her hands into the narrow spaces between the teeth, knocking loose medallions and ribbons that quickly vanish in the flood. The muscles of her stomach seem to scream in protest as she swings her legs to the side and around the jawbone. She takes a few deep breaths as she hangs from the arch and looks into the library. Thankfully, someone’s propped open the oak doors so she won’t have to push them inside against all that water—frankly, at that point she thinks she would have climbed up to a window and broken in.

            But she can see the desk in the entryway now—she wonders what’s happened to the useless guest book—and the path of window ledges and shelves that will lead her to her destination: a display on piracy in one of the small exhibition rooms off the main reading room.

           

            When she looks up from her jump from the main reading room door to one of the heavy tables inside, she pushes her hood back in astonishment at what she sees. She won’t have to do much more leaping at all. Even in the center of the flood, with water bursting from the sunken well house with no sign of stopping, someone, or, more likely, many someones, have pushed the tables into convenient pathways connecting all the entrances and exits of the reading room.

            There’s no time to stay and wonder, though, so she sprints toward the exhibition room.

            The exhibition appears partially looted once she gets a chance to look at it, though not in the way she would have expected. All the documents—diaries, ships’ logs, letters—on the lower levels are gone, while all the examples of treasure remain, among other artifacts. It troubles her for only a moment before she shakes the thought away. After all, she will prove to be the strangest thief in the library today. Leaning precariously towards a glass display case, she wraps the scarf that previously covered her face over her fist and smashes the panes. She shakes out the scarf, flings it over her shoulder, and reaches in to remove what she came here for: the twin swords of the legendary fire-working pirate, Flamehand of the Impassable Sea.

            She supposes Sandy would say it makes a certain sense: like Flamehand, she’s arming herself for a task outside her nature, in a place vastly foreign to her. By taking Flamehand’s swords from the library, she’s, in a way, taking herself, a relic of the Empire of the Five Beacons, out of the library as well, and putting herself to use in a way she never expected to.

            But she’d like to think that this isn’t a fixed endpoint. She’d like to think she’s making a practical choice, not playing into some grand pattern. The Tooth Palace holds many swords, after all. But she knew where these were at once, and she knows that they’ll withstand whatever she does to them, even if her magic flares up in ways she can’t imagine right now. These swords were made for one who could have been a fire adept, and so as a fire adept she will wield them. She ties her scarf around her waist to serve as a sword-belt and secures the blades, hoping that it isn’t obvious that it’s been years since she even touched a prop sword.

            She exits the piracy exhibition and heads towards the stairs. Now that she has her weapons, she can go to the upper levels where some of the buildings are joined and make her way to street level somewhere where the current isn’t quite so strong.

            As she goes up the stairs, she notices that many more doors hang open than she knows is normal for the library, and the glances they afford her into the stacks reveal much more disorganization than is usual as well. Could her brief absence have led to such disarray? She can’t be the only person in the city capable of running the Great Library, she just _can’t_ —if she is, it’s going to be very complicated for her to retain her post after what she has planned.

            She rounds a corner on the stairs and nearly collides with a junior page, green robes tied up around her knees.

            “Director!” The page cries in astonishment, before straightening up and trying to adjust her uniform as best she can.

            “Sheena!” Toothiana says, causing the page to go red, while Toothiana finds she’s equally astonished that her memory for names and faces has apparently returned. “What are you doing here?”

            “It’s not just me, Director. Senior page Bright rounded up all of us girls who live in Nibs House and brought us here because she said she had a feeling we needed to be at the library today. And she was right, because when we got here the Tooth Palace door was stuck open like it could never be closed, and the well in the reading room was starting to overflow. I don’t know what happened to the guards. So we’ve been trying to move everything that could be damaged by water up to higher levels.”

            “Have you been keeping track of where you’ve moved everything?” Toothiana asks.

            “Of course!” Sheena says, affronted.

            “Have you noted down everyone who’s helped out today?”

            “Yes?”

            “Good,” Toothiana says. “I shall have you all commended.”

            “Oh!” Sheena exclaims, finally daring to look Toothiana in the eyes, where her pleased expression becomes one of confusion. “Director, are you all right? Your eyes…I’ve heard that color only appears in…”

            “You’ve heard correctly.” Sheena’s eyes widen further, but she shows no other sign of fear, and Toothiana can’t help but smile. It seems that fire does not change her pages so easily. “I will say, then, that I shall have you all commended if I remain Director after today. Now. Very good show, do carry on.” She moves to continue up the stairs.

            “Wait!” Sheena calls. “Where are you going with those?” She gestures to the swords.

            Toothiana’s smile widens to a grin. “Acquisitions and Collection Preservation. If you and the other pages secure the library here, I’d very much appreciate it if you could help me. I’ll be at the old Dream Cloisters on the palace grounds.” Toothiana presses her hand over her heart, bows slightly, and bounds up the stairs, feeling neither wholly like Director Toothiana, nor fire adept Toothiana, but a combination of both that she never considered could exist and one she finds she very much likes.

 

            The sun passes its zenith and thirteen wells overflow. The people of the city gather in the spreading flood, parents holding their children above the rushing water. The water is warm and clear, and somehow seems to know the strength of each person standing in the current, pushing on each just as much as they can bear. It is a flood of wonder, and in the brightness of the sunlit water (was water ever so bright in the sun before?) the people remember the dreams they had last night, such dreams as they never knew could be dreamt. Above the current’s constant song, they tell their dreams to their families, their friends, their neighbors and strangers. And when they have spoken of these, a few begin to speak of other things they have seen that day, almost more dreamlike than the dreams themselves. The bright red automatic carriage of St. North racing through the streets, with the Dreamweaver in the passenger seat and a grim man all in black perched behind them both. The Dreamweaver entering a well house with this man close by his side but never touching.

            “I don’t know what happened in the well house,” one says. “but it wasn’t but a few minutes since St. North drove them away that the well began to overflow.”

            “Even if there was nothing to see,” another says, “there was certainly enough to hear. I heard…I heard the Dreamweaver singing. He was quiet, I think, but it wasn’t something you _couldn’t_ hear. I think it was in that language they say light adepts used to have. That one where you can only speak the truth.”

            “I heard it too,” says yet another, with a faraway look. “I wish I could have understood what he was singing, I felt so close to understanding something, something very, very important.”

            “But who was with him? I mean, I thought…well, maybe this doesn’t make sense, but I thought the man with him looked like the sketches of the Nightmare King in the papers.”

            “But hasn’t the Nightmare King been trying to kill the Dreamweaver? And whoever the man with him was, he didn’t look at him like he was someone he wanted to kill.”

            And when all their words run out for what they’ve dreamed and what they’ve seen, what they’ve heard and what they’ve felt, they turn to each other, questions in all eyes and answers in none. And then, one by one, tentatively, defiantly, eagerly, and in every way such an action may be taken, so many are they, they drink of the bright, clear water. They drink, and they understand.

 

            Sandy’s lost track of how many wells he’s bled into, what time of day it is. He supposes this is better, easier. His song still flows unwaveringly from his mouth, even as North supports him on the way into this next well house. He guesses that by the next one North will have to carry him entirely. He’d like to tell North that, but he doubts he has the strength to stop his song. Oh well. North will find out soon enough when Sandy’s unable to push himself out of the carriage.

            He’s fairly certain only light is keeping him alive now, that there’s not enough blood left in him now for a human heartbeat. At each well, more time passes between the reopening of the long cut on his forearm and the moment when he knows to press the soaked gauze to it and draw away.

            _“No, we have to keep it,” Pitch had said to North when the first square of cloth had become saturated. “We’ll need it for the last well.”_

            What he does know, what he is entirely sure of, is that his blood has opened every moonpool so far, and filled the water with the knowledge that needs to be spread. Toothiana and Jack have done their work well, for the moment the first drops of his blood mingled with the water of the first well, he had felt as if he was in the center of a vast bell, ringing out its pure, world-shaking tone for the first time in centuries.

            He could even name the note of it, as it slipped into his song.

            All the wells after had felt like the first, adding harmony upon harmony to the first note, filling his mind and overwhelming almost all thought and feeling as he served as the conduit for magic that could ring the world apart, so long had so much of it waited.

            He removes the gauze from his arm and holds it over the well. It feels like nothing when he watches Pitch run the blade down his wound again, the blood barely even clotted from the previous well. It feels like nothing, and though there’s little left in him that can want, he wants to feel something, something, anything—and then his blood hits the water and the harmony of the moonpools shifts in his mind and it what it _feels_ like is all the stars in their courses using him as their fixed point and there is nothing in him that is not light and the power behind light in all its dizzying patterns. He is not here, he is not bleeding blood, his mind is bleeding into a space behind the physical world where this power has been waiting, he is the opening door….

            And he looks at Pitch grasping the knife he made with his hands for Pitch’s hands. He grips the knife as tightly as if he fears losing it more than he’s ever feared anything, as he once grasped Sandy’s hands.

            Pitch.

            And deep in the shadows of the inside of his skull, where light has always been welcomed, but is not inherent, he thinks: _This isn’t fair_.

            Maybe it has to happen. Maybe it’s wondrous. Maybe it’s going to save the kingdom, maybe it’s going to save even more than that. But it still isn’t fair.

            He should be feeling pain. He should be feeling the last touch that Pitch can give him. He should be able to choose whether to stop singing or not. He should be more than a conduit, because he _is_ more than a conduit. He is himself, he is _Sandy_ , and he should still be now. Why is light making his mind ring through the stars when it’s demanded his blood? It can’t start lying now, can it? His body matters, it matters more than ever; his blood may be light but it’s still blood, and it’s still his. And giving it will kill his body, even though he doesn’t want to die.

            He doesn’t want to die, but he will.

            And he wants to feel it. He deserves to feel it. He deserves to feel what he is choosing, he deserves to feel that he _is_ choosing, at the last, because a choice was demanded of him and he must keep making that choice in this body that he’s had for so long. He is light. Yes. And maybe this moment was inevitable because of who he was and is, but it still relied on the choices he made, the choice he makes now.

            He is light. But he needn’t have been. There were always other paths. Pitch found one. Magnes traveled another. Solana. Phosphrae.

            Light was not the same for all. Light will not be the same for all.

            And it matters that he is Sandy, it matters that this is his body, it matters more than ever when he is becoming a conduit for the magic of this land. If he has been chosen, then all of him matters. Even the darkness inside his skull.

            His voice wavers and roughens as a flash of searing pain hits him, spreading from his arm throughout his aching body. He feels lightheaded and short of breath, but he feels these things literally. His dying is no longer a metaphor gilded by the power still wheeling and ringing around him.

            He takes what breath he can to strengthen his song, and in his own ears, he can finally say that _he_ is singing, all of him, not light itself, and not even a separate part of him that he thinks of as light. He is his magic and he is his body, and it is his blood opening the moonpools and his weakening lungs singing the song of revelation.

            He presses the gauze to his arm and meets Pitch’s eyes.

            He doesn’t know what Pitch can read in his eyes, but he does know that he’s not able to hide anything anymore. Not his pain, not his desire not to die, not his determination to die, and, most of all, he can’t hide that he remains Sandy.

            Whether Pitch sees all of these things or only a few of them, what he does see sends a change through his own expression. Sandy easily reads despair, but only for an instant. From there, it changes to something, in true shadow adept fashion, utterly unreadable.

            Or maybe not so unreadable, but the strangest expression Pitch can wear at this moment.

            Sandy trusts him to play his part in this sacrifice as long as Sandy’s actions do not waver, and yet…and yet Pitch almost looks as if he’s planning something.

 

            “This way,” Pitch whispers, and North’s not entirely sure he hears him with his ears. All around the autocarriage, the streets rush with water from the moonpools in an eerie and beautiful flood, the water remaining shockingly clear even as it washes through the city not towards the Serene, but in a baffling flow of currents that North knows he could make sense of if only he had a little time to himself, a moment to focus on something almost understandable rather than the powers he’s been lifting with his only human arms, again and again. But it’s all part of the same incomprehensibility, clarity on a scale he’s never been asked to comprehend before, and though he wants to understand, he wants to understand so badly, all he can do is know the things Sandy still sings into the water, and lift him, and Pitch, one last time, to the last moonpool.

            Pitch glances at him as he turns down the street, and North guesses he’d like to make some remark about how North must have known this was where they were going—there was no other place to go. But his strength is gone, and only his eyes remain to him to be Pitch.

            North brings the autocarriage to the edge of the Great Moon Fountain, thanking his lucky stars—afraid to name anything else to thank—that he’d thought to build it to withstand floods that would wash up against its underside, though he’d never really thought that the City of the Moon would ever face the same storms as Cloudsea. This might have turned out to be a worse and stranger storm, but the practicalities were the same.

            Near the Fountain, the confusion of currents in the streets becomes clear. The water flows around it, making it the center of a vast whirlpool. It seems orderly to North, and he hopes against hope that this means that Sandy’s been successful, because he’s given far too much to come back.

            North climbs down from the vehicle into the water, which, though it only reaches his knees, demands most of his strength to keep him upright.

            What remains is just enough to carry the adepts. In his arms, Sandy is cooler than anyone still singing should rightly be, though he does still sing, a song that North will never forget nor be able to describe, a song of things worth dying for, though it is not North called to do this last. He places Sandy on the wide ledge surrounding the base of the Fountain that still separates its water from the flood, letting him go gently and trying not to think about how the breath in his lungs is no longer matched by a pulse.

            He returns to the carriage to retrieve Pitch and the gauze used to stanch Sandy’s wound in the morning. Pitch already holds the bloody cloth in his hands, and he shakes his head at North. “All,” he whispers, “and I’ll be in the water.”

            “Was not going to argue with you now,” North says solemnly. When he brings Pitch to the edge of the Fountain, he sees that Sandy’s pushed himself into the hip-deep water. His white robes billow around him and he shivers: the water of this last pool has not yet gained the healing warmth of the flood.

            North holds Pitch over the water and he nods. North carefully lowers him in, supporting him until he’s standing, not steadily, but at least in such a way that North thinks he can remain standing just a little bit longer.

            Sandy and Pitch look at each other, and it strikes North how brutally young they both look. It doesn’t do him any good to think of how old he knows they are; over the course of the day the lights in their eyes have changed from something that told all they were adept and immortal, to something much more human, much more frightened. It reminds him of the look he gave when he was a young man to others stacking sandbags against the worst squall anyone’d seen in living memory. It reminds him of the look on the faces of some of his young workers when they’d proved the farming machines worked.

            They step towards each other, both keeping their hands on the edge of the Fountain for balance, and North hears Sandy’s song change. It sounds like a summoning, and North wonders if he’s calling the last drops of blood in his body to his arm, since his heart’s not going to do him any good now.

            Once Sandy and Pitch are close as they’ll ever be alive, they pause for a moment. They no longer look like young adults to North. No! They look like children, somehow, the children they must have been before they were chosen by Light.

            Sandy takes the gauze from his arm and dips it into the water, exposing the long wound on his arm, neat-edged thanks to the sharpness of the blade yet still awful to behold. Pitch does the same with the bandages he holds. From around the cloths, red clouds begin to form in the water, and Sandy, then Pitch, lets go of them.

            As Pitch unwraps the knife for the last time, North looks away, then back again, and away, again. He must see this. No one should see this. Everyone must see this. And when he looks away from Pitch and Sandy for the second time, he sees that everyone _has_ come to see this.

            They stand at the edge of the square, blocking every road that leads to it, but no one yet has dared to cross into the square itself, though North knows the water must be pulling at them all. What do they see? What do they understand? What are they looking for? Do they not care what is happening in the fountain before them? North turns slowly to take in the crowd. They are of all ages, all professions, all classes. Some are alone; some have come with their families down to the smallest swaddled baby. Under the pink-gold sky of the approaching sunset, freed of the thought of the next moonpool, North grows angry at this crowd, though he knows they aren’t the ones he should be angry with.  And yet! Why do they stand there? What are they waiting for? Don’t they know that their adepts are going to die? Don’t they care about Sandy, even if they bear no love for Pitch? Why aren’t they trying to stop him? Why don’t they let North fight, let his strong arms be useful still? Do any of them know their Dreamweaver is _Sandy_ , strange and wonderful yes, but also human, human as any of them, and he’s about to _die_ before them and do any of them care? Can any of them understand? Can any of them understand this about anyone’s dying?

            Can North understand?

            A tall young woman with long, wild hair pushes through to the front of the crowd. “Sandy!” she calls.

 

            “Sandy!” someone calls from the edge of the square. Pitch wonders who it is and then just as quickly forgets that wonder. Neither he nor Sandy look away from each other. Sandy presents his arm; Pitch holds the knife. In the fountain the water washes the bandages until they’re white as new-fallen snow. The tiles shift underneath their feet and Pitch wishes it could be enough, that they could rest before they died.

            “Pitch!” the same voice calls. He almost expects whoever said it to follow with “stop!”, but they don’t. He thinks he feels glad that someone’s seeing him now and naming him. It must mean Sandy’s light has spread revelation throughout the city. But then, what could Sandy’s light not reveal? Sandy’s light did not illuminate dead-end paths.

            Or so he hopes.

            But if he is to not fail in that, he must first not fail in this.

            He presses the knife against Sandy’s pale flesh, the only flush remaining in the skin of his arm. Pitch would marvel at the magic keeping him upright, but his own legs waver and his own thoughts slow as the last drops of Sandy’s blood fall into the water. Magic is not enough to keep them alive through this; strange have their bodies been, but oh so necessarily human.

            Pitch drops the knife when the cut is complete. It vanishes into the water, hidden by a growing bloom of blood.

            Above them, vast, wing-like clouds, gilded by the setting sun, fan through a rose-colored sky.

            As always, Pitch knows the exact moment when the sun disappears below the horizon, though today is different from any other day. He knows when the sun has set because Sandy’s blood stops flowing then. As Pitch watches, the gold of Sandy’s eyes fades until all that’s left is the warm brown they must have been when Sandy was first chosen.

            He stops singing, laboring to breathe. “ _Why?_ ” he says, and then, “oh.” Some blood remains on his skin. He stumbles as he kneels in the water, water that Pitch still feels as icy cold, and shouldn’t it be warmer now? But perhaps his time for warmth is over.

            Sandy stumbles too far once the water washes over his arm. He falls forward, and the water closes over his head.

            _No!_ Pitch thinks. Sandy can’t drown, that’s not how this ends! What was demanded of Sandy was all his light, not his death.

            And like everything of Light, that demand had been exactly, and only, what it said. Sandy is dying at this moment, and dying quickly, as the last of his light leaves him.

            He could live and recover with only a little light given back to him, but, of course, there are no more light adepts to give any. The sun has set, the moon has not yet risen, and the sky is still too pale for stars.

            The only one with Sandy now is a shadow adept who took a name with him into the darkness, who closed his eyes when shadow chose him, not for fear of what he would see, but to keep a shining secret, defying shadow and becoming it in one moment. And now, on this day of revelation, he can only hope that it isn’t too late to tell it.

            He falls on his knees, then hands and knees, in the fountain, the water—not so cold as it was?—splashing over his face and running into his mouth as he gasps for breath.

            It tastes like moonpool water.

            And so it is done, let it be done, let his strength be enough, let his body be sound enough for this! He reaches down to grab Sandy’s collar and pulls his face out of the water, his arm shaking with the strain of the awkward angle and the effort it takes to make sure he himself does not fall into Sandy, even though it is over, it has to be over, and so why would it matter now?

            And should not Pitch be burned for this? His heart pounds in his chest as if he’s the one who’s been bleeding out when he looks at Sandy’s pale face, water running from his slack lips.

            And then his eyes open, just enough so that Pitch is sure he’s looking at him. He coughs, and more water falls from his mouth. “ _My light is gone_ ,” he says in Shining, and his eyes close.

            Maybe the way he heard light’s demand was the truth of it, Pitch has time to think, feeling his limbs turn heavy as lead. But before his thoughts can continue or stop for good, Sandy’s eyes fly open once more. “ _My light is gone from me,_ ” he whispers in surprise.

            Pitch wraps his trembling arms around him, still not touching skin to skin. He does not know how to take this, he does not know how to give this. He hears the smallest hitch in Sandy’s breath, sees Sandy’s lips twitch as if he’s trying to smile. Pitch hopes what he’s about to do is right because he cannot do otherwise. He presses his thin cheek against Sandy’s round one, so cold, so cold, and he has no warmth to offer.

            He weeps for them.

            He weeps for them, and he does not know if it is sorrow, but it is true. “Sandy,” he whispers, letting go of the name he carried with him into the dark. “ _I kept some. With me. Just a little. It’s yours_.” And his eyes fill with light, light that matches the shade of the ring of gold around his pupils that’s never faded, light that he refused to let shadow take from him though he knew well he was shadow through and through. “ _Please. I’ve brought you a draught of light, Sandy, to make you an adept again. Please_.”

            With a quaking hand he wipes his brilliant tears and brings the raw light to Sandy’s mouth. Oh and there is no time to marvel at this; those sweet lips are cold, so cold. He places his tears on the insides of Sandy’s lips, his teeth, his tongue.

            And there are more tears, and yet more.

            The water warms, but Pitch cannot tell if Sandy does. He cannot tell if he leans into him by choice or because he no longer has strength or will.

            The ground beneath their knees rumbles, unbalancing them.

            The last things Pitch hears before they sink beneath the water are a series of loud, sharp, cracks, one after another. He neither knows, nor cares, what they could be.


	27. Jack Returns To Fountain Square

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack returns to Fountain Square. North, Seraphina, and Bunny meet him there, and they try to make sense of certain things they have seen.

            A sharp pain on his sole shocks Jack out of the daze he’s been wandering in since morning.          

            He leans against a nearby wall and carefully runs his fingers over his foot—the last light of day isn’t enough for him to see by, and all the buildings around him are dark, and seem empty.

            After pulling it from his foot, Jack holds the large shard of glass in front of him and sighs. It seems to vibrate with significance, but everything he sees does since he swallowed so much moonpool water to try and stop himself from drowning and then, when he was actually drowning.

            Belatedly, he remembers the bottle of light in his pocket and takes it out to use it to look more closely at the glass. There’s something odd about finding such a large chunk of it in the middle of the street, especially since the flood appears to have cleansed the city of any other rubbish or waste. He wonders if the city’s horses are going to have any opinion on that, and chokes down a laugh. It’s not really funny, and he doesn’t really want to laugh, not now.

            The shard’s sharp edges catch the bottled light as if they were made to do so, and when Jack turns over the shard the smoother side is shaped like an animal’s eye, and he almost drops it. Has he just cut himself on a fragment of the Great Moon Fountain?

            When the water from the moonpool below the well house had forced him and the block of stone that had served as a trapdoor up and out, that hadn’t been the end of the rush of water. Jack had watched, stunned, as the water had destroyed the well house entirely, until not even two bricks stood on top of each other. He supposed that now, after the water had receded, the only way to get it was to venture down the stairs to the moonpool itself. That seemed to be asking a lot of people who just wanted to make some tea after such a strange and harrowing day, but what did he know? Other than the same three things that no one could ever forget.

            It makes sense that the Great Moon Fountain would have been destroyed, but to find this fragment…is he even anywhere near it?

            He holds us the little bottle of light so he can read the road sign at the corner. So. He is, in fact, quite near, despite the darkness of the streets making everything appear unfamiliar.

            He keeps the light out and begins to make his way towards Fountain Square. Nothing he does feels like certain steps on a path since he managed to find his feet after the moonpool water forced him back to the surface—the possibilities are too dense; it’s impossible to pick out the right choice. In comparison, his first few days in the palace after awakening with no memory seem remarkably stable and certain. But if he does not _have_ to see the destroyed fountain, he _wants_ to. It’s important to _him_ , and that’s all he needs right now.

            The nearer he gets to the square, the slower his progress becomes, as the cobblestones grow thick with chunks of glass. He spots one the size of his head and feels a bit queasy. The well houses had gathered crowds as the day passed; the Fountain probably would have been no different. If it had flown apart as violently as the range on some of the pieces of glass indicates, a lot of people could have gotten hurt. He forces his gaze up, hoping to avoid noticing any tell-tale stains.

            Before him lies the square. He leans against the wall to allow his mind more energy to figure out exactly what he’s seeing. The scattered glass of the Fountain reflects the moon and starlight on jagged edges, turning the whole square into a treacherous maze. The Fountain itself appears to have been replaced with a swathe of inky darkness, and for a moment or two Jack assumes that it is exactly what it appears, an unexpected pool of darkness, and he imagines with a shudder a mob tearing Pitch apart for destroying their Fountain, their Sandy. Then, however, he realizes what the final object in the square is and what the darkness must be.

            North’s autocarriage leans into the darkness, one of its wheels lost in shadow, but the corner of its body where it falls into shadow still reflects a little moonlight. So it’s not darkness. It’s a hole. The ground above the moonpool must have caved in when the water was released.

            Having figured that out and allowing himself a moment or two of calm, Jack’s gaze alights on the final item of note: there’s light coming from the ground floor windows of Sandy’s house.

            He guesses and hopes that North’s the one inside, but even if he isn’t, confronting whoever’s in there will either make something happen or stop Jack from having to be the one that makes things happen, at least for a time. Either option sounds good.

            He picks his way across the square, giving the hole above the moonpool a wide berth—a task easier said than done as he approaches Sandy’s house, since the edge of the pit reaches right to the front step. Once he’s settled there, he allows himself to look down. The water’s not as dizzying as it was earlier, and its glow is so faint that it could easily be assumed to be the reflection of the moonlight by someone who hadn’t been in the city that day.

            Still, if he had to ascribe a human characteristic to the water below, he wouldn’t choose “peaceful”. “Waiting” would be far more apt.

            He scoots himself up the steps, standing only when a fall won’t pitch him directly into the pool, and knocks on the door.

            “Jack?” North says, his voice laced with relief and wonder as he ushers him inside. “I had no idea how I was going to find you.”

            “You were going to find me?” His voice echoes in the hall, or maybe just in his head. That’s probably not good. He needs—he needs to puke, or drink some rainwater, or sleep, or…to heal himself, but how can he do that? But he helped heal the Lunar Kingdom, surely his own small self…

            North pauses in their slow walk across the entry hall. “Of course, Jack. I would not like you to be making your next decision without at least one friend to talk to.” He looks back across the floor and notices that bloody footprints trail behind Jack. _Wasted!_ He thinks in alarm, bells ringing in his head, before he slowly comes back to the reality of the moment. “Jack, what happened to your feet?”

            “I stepped on a piece of glass earlier,” he explains, “from the fountain.” Looking back himself, he sees that the bloody footprints are in pairs. “And I guess, maybe I also did again while I was crossing the square? That fountain had a lot of glass in it. And my feet hurt pretty bad anyway. I’ve been walking all day and I didn’t have my shoes because I took them off when I was underground by a moonpool and the water was rising and it didn’t seem right and—” He breaks off to take a shuddering breath, startling when North brushes tears from his eyes.

            He sighs. “No more walking until we fix you up, all right?”

            Jack nods and North scoops him up as if he’s much younger than he actually is. “But the moonpool, North! The moonpool! The moonpool! I need to tell you and I don’t know…I almost drowned and…I don’t know and I’m so tired and I want to sleep, but I feel like something will _happen_ if I sleep and I don’t want things to happen right now because I’m too tired, but things will happen and I can’t stop them, but I did something good, right? And so can I maybe not sleep but _stop_ for a little while and I just don’t want anything to happen, anything at all, because I don’t know what has _already_ happened.”

            “Let it out, Jack, I am listening,” North says as he sets him down in the lamplit kitchen, where Bunny and a woman Jack hasn’t met before sit at the table.

            “I…” Jack leans forward to rest his head and arms on the table. “I think I might be starting to remember things about my past. I drank so much moonpool water. And I don’t even really know what happened. I don’t. I know that Sandy…sun and stars, I don’t know how to be involved in this. I thought I did in the moonpool but everything keeps going and I can’t…”

            “North, you’ve found cups around this kitchen, haven’t you?” Bunny asks as he stands up.

            “Over there.” North points as he reheats the teakettle.

            “Right.”

            Jack lifts his head to the very ordinary sound of a glass being placed on the table. “That’s for you. From this bottle.” Bunny nods at the one he’s brought to the table, the one with the symbol on it that Jack had recognized during his earlier visit. “Call it intuition, or a bit of lingering revelation, but I think it’ll make you feel better.”

            Jack takes a sip of the water, and the calming of his thoughts seems very nearly physical. “This is my source,” he says. “And it’s only here because…no.” He presses his hands to the sides of his head, refusing to let his thoughts skirl away down a thousand intertwined paths.

            For a while, the only sounds are those of North treating Jack’s injured feet as best he can. When North’s tucked the last bandage end into place, Jack breaks the silence. “What happened, at the end?”

            The woman Jack hasn’t met before takes a deep breath and lifts her hands from her lap to curl around her fresh mug of tea. Jack notices with some alarm that her hands and the visible portion of her forearms are covered in small lacerations. And, upon a second look, so are North’s, now that Jack’s had a moment of calm to see.

            “We can tell you what we saw,” she says. “My name’s Sera, by the way. But as to what happened…right now I don’t think any of us are really sure.”

            Sera tells Jack of how she let the water draw her to the square, how when she saw Sandy she couldn’t help but call his name, how she could have stopped herself from calling out Pitch’s name, but she didn’t. “Neither Sandy nor Pitch acted like they heard me. I suppose I’m glad of that. I suppose if it had been a story I would have told myself to be quiet to try not to ruin it. But I didn’t want them to die. And so I ran through the water as best I could to try to reach them—and it was like a nightmare, because the water pushed back against me with every step, but it wasn’t like a nightmare, because everything was so real. The water was so wet, I can’t believe my clothes are starting to dry already.

            “Anyway, when I ran towards them it was like…it was all me, not just me as a little part of whatever was happening with Pitch and Sandy, though that was there in my head, too. And I was in the water and everyone was in the water and the water liked that I was running towards them because I didn’t want them to die but it couldn’t let me reach them and so…I didn’t.”

            She looks down into her mug of tea. “I saw Pitch cut open Sandy’s arm, and I saw Sandy bleed into the fountain. Sandy fell, then, and Pitch pulled him back out of the water. He held him close, and then…North, you were closer and you know Jack. Maybe you should tell the next part.”

            “Why?” Jack asks. His voice doesn’t echo now.  Either his source is helping or he’d always ask why about this, no matter what. But it sounds like it all happened as Sandy intended it to. Leaving Sandy and Pitch gone, and the land supposedly restored. With magic, but no history. He has never been glad of such a state in himself, and now that it’s the whole Lunar Kingdom, he likes it even less.

            “Because next part is part we did not expect.” North looks down at his hands like they’re a scrying-bowl. When the cuts from today heal into scars, he suspects they _will_ be a scrying-bowl into this one day, for as long as he lives.

            “Pitch wept for Sandy. And when he did, his tears were light. He tried to give his tears to Sandy to drink, and maybe he succeeded.

            “They sank into the water and it was...it felt like…to me it felt like a storm I had once been in. The storms on the Cloudsea are large, but they have calms within them. The longest calms are held within the worst storms. The longest calm I ever saw lasted eight days. When the storm started again even buildings miles from the sea disappeared into the waves. When Sandy and Pitch sank into the water, I felt as though I was in a calm, with a month of calm behind me.” He nods to himself. “The feeling has not quite faded.

            “I started forward to retrieve them. I think I pretended I was one of my machines. And then, the fountain began to fall.”

            “It shattered,” Seraphina says. “It only took minutes. The water burst from the fountain, carrying some chunks of glass with it, but most of the glass just fell down into the pool at the base.

            “Then the ground began to shake, and a water began to jet up from a point on the square that wasn’t the fountain—and then in another place, and another. That was the space over the moonpool. The jets got weaker the more of them there were, and though I don’t think I knew what was happening, I knew I wanted to get Pitch and Sandy away from the Fountain. For safety. Though for all I knew, it didn’t matter.”

            “I would not have been able to pull both of them to safety without Seraphina,” North says. “I carried Sandy and she carried Pitch—it was not very pretty. We could not see the glass in the water, and, anyway, there was too much. Glass. Water. Blood.”

            “It was Aster’s idea to bring them to the house.” Seraphina rests her hand on his arm. “It was hard to see, or think, then. We were so close, and…”

            “I think I’d gotten a little more used to moonpool water with that palace well,” Aster says, then shakes his head. “Nothing like the water today, but I didn’t need to keep too many of my wits about me. Where else would we have gone? How would we have gotten there?”

            “And the door opened before me,” North says. “That was the first sign that…well, I do not know. That we are still in the calm, maybe.”

            “What do you mean?” Jack asks.

            The other three look at each other, then back to him. “Come upstairs and we will show you,” North says.

 

            Pitch and Sandy have been laid next to each other on what looks to Jack like a bizarrely ordinary bed. The sheets are slightly rumpled, but clean; a patchwork quilt, all shades of red and gold, is folded so it covers them up to their waists; he can see little scratches as signs of age on the simple scrollwork of the blondewood headboard and footboard.

            _They should have more than this_ , Jack thinks, though he’s not sure that either of them wanted more, or that there was any way for them to have ended up with more. If the kingdom had been in such a state to have had crystal coffins already prepared for them, they wouldn’t have needed to die this way, would they?

            “They didn’t take all their clothes when they came to my house,” North says quietly. “We were able to change them into dry things.”

            Jack nods. That’s good. That’s important. Better than a crystal coffin. He looks at them, not sure if he’s forcing himself to do so or not. He wraps his arms around himself, holding his elbows. Pitch’s face is peaceful as he’d never seen it. Sandy’s paler than Jack himself. He shivers as he notices the bloodless lacerations on their faces and hands. The glass. But Sandy would have been far beyond bleeding by then, and Pitch? Jack wonders only for a moment. He doesn’t know enough about bodies, and he certainly doesn’t know enough about this kind of magic, to get an answer right now, especially an answer that’s less important than the bodies in front of him. He’s never been so close to death, not that he can remember.

            “When we changed their clothes, it wasn’t like what we expected,” Seraphina says. “And I knew what to expect.”

            “You say things like that, and North says that we’re still in a calm, but I don’t understand,” Jack says, his voice breaking on the last word. “And I’m sorry. But now…please, just tell me what you want me to know. I can’t figure it out. There’s too much in my head and it hurts to think about it and Sandy and Pitch are dead. And we all might as well be, too. We can’t go back to how we were and after today how are we supposed to fit in the city or the world…”

            “Understand.” Seraphina shakes her head. She steps closer to Sandy and looks at Jack. “It’s been a few hours since the fountain shattered. But look.” She takes Sandy’s hand and lifts it, bending his arm at the elbow easily.

            “What are you doing?” Jack asks.

            Seraphina lowers Sandy’s arm and rests it again on the folded over quilt. “My mother died in her sleep,” she says. “It happened a few years after my father died. I was the only one there to take care of her. One of the…practical…things I learned then was that when you die, your body stiffens up after a few hours.” She pauses. “That should have happened to Sandy and Pitch by now, but it hasn’t.”

            “Does that mean they’re not dead?” Jack stares at them, hope growing alongside a terror he can’t explain.

            “I don’t think they’re dead,” Aster says, still quietly, as if they were. “I’ve always had a sense for it, as an earth worker. Earth adept. Sandy would have called me that. But I don’t think they’re alive, either.”

            “They are not breathing,” North explains, “and they do not have pulses. But they do not grow cold or stiff.” He presses the back of his hand against Pitch’s forehead, as if checking a child for fever. “This is what I think. Pitch’s body and his magic remained sound and mostly unused today. It is his link to Sandy that has put him in the state he is in now. Sandy, though.” North takes a deep breath. “His body. His magic, tied to his body. He gave. Everything. But if Pitch managed to give him even a little light, I do not think he can die. If Pitch lives and Sandy has light, I think Sandy must live as well.

            “But if…if it was Sandy, only human, that lived long enough for Pitch to give him tears of light, only that light is sustaining him now. The blood. Sun and Moon. And I think those few drops of light cannot be enough to bring Sandy to wake and breathe and be human once again.” North shakes his head. “Maybe the moonpool water will help. But now that the flood has gone, it seems…quieter.”

            “I think Sandy needs more light,” Seraphina says. “But North told us that all of it that Sandy brought to the city was used up. There’ll be more light adepts in the future, but…starting from nothing, who knows when they’ll learn how to gather light so that it can be drunk? I watched Sandy do it and it seemed so simple, but it couldn’t possibly have been…”

            “That doesn’t matter,” says Jack, and the others turn to him in surprise. Their expressions grow more puzzled when they see the beginnings of a smile on his face. “North, did you forget? I needed to light my way in the tunnels, and Sandy…Sandy gave me this.” He removes the little bottle of light from the inner pocket of his coat. “I wonder what he’d have to say about that.” He cradles the bottle in his hands, while the light it sheds brings sharper contrast to everything in the room.

            “Maybe you’ll have a chance to find out, now,” Aster says.

            Seraphina moves away from Sandy so Jack can approach.

            He stands at the side of the bed, looking down at Sandy’s pale face. Burgeoning hope fills him, but the terror of before hasn’t gone away either. He’s not sure what he’s afraid of. That this won’t work? That it will? That he’ll never be able to fade into the background? He’s already made himself a part of history today, when he doesn’t even know his own. And yet…without Sandy and Pitch, he wouldn’t have dared to name himself a water adept. He wouldn’t have learned that people with power like his could use it to heal.

            He uncorks the bottle. He chose to live and help heal the city when he was surrounded by rising moonpool water. Now, he can heal again. For Sandy, he can feel that part of his magic as it presses somewhat uneasily against the knowledge that he’s going to use foreign magic to do this healing. Even uneasy, though, it feels good that the sense is there. It’s not quite what Pitch had been trying to teach him about when they talked of control, and it’s nothing like the king or the court had ever mentioned when talking about his magic. It’s his.

            “I feel like I should say something,” he says, kneeling at the side of the bed.

            “I spoke with Sandy a few days ago,” Seraphina says. “And there was one phrase he said with a weight I didn’t understand. All will be well.”

            Jack glances at her. “He said the same thing in the carriage after Pitch rescued me. I’ll say it and hope it’s true, then.” He turns back to Sandy and gently pulls his mouth open. “All _will_ be well, Sandy.” He pours the light between Sandy’s lips in a thin stream, and though he can’t see Sandy’s throat move to swallow it, the light doesn’t fill his mouth, and so his body must have accepted it in some way.

            No immediate change is apparent in either Sandy or Pitch once the bottle is empty, and Jack feels sure that if he stays here to keep vigil he’s never going to recover from this day, ever, no matter what the outcome. Instead, North helps him up and guides him, Seraphina, and Aster from the room, closing the door softly behind him.

            “We must all rest now,” he says. “Sandy wanted light and shadow to be equal. I think we have all earned a little time of peaceful darkness.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, Pitch's tears were still absolutely necessary. Those tears had the same ancient continuity of light as Sandy's blood, a power that could not be matched by any light gathered from the passing of the sun or moon.


	28. The Day After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching and waiting in Fountain Square. Toothiana sends a message, and the others try to figure out what's going to happen next.

“Does he look less pale?”

            “I think so? Maybe? Anyway, let’s open the curtains and let the light shine on him. I know he’s not a plant, but I’ve got to stick with what I know,” Aster says. Seraphina smiles, ties back the curtains, and he walks up beside her and takes her hand. “You seem different today.”

            “Everything should seem different today. I don’t understand everything that happened, but it doesn’t frighten me. It feels all right not to know everything at once. And,” she continues as she steps over to Pitch and lifts his arm for a moment, “now I’m really, really sure they’re not dead.”

            “I suppose we’ve still got to cover Pitch’s face and hands, though, right? Because of the sunlight?”

            “We’ll use his hat, though, not a sheet,” Seraphina says, tucking his hands under the covers. “There’s no need to be morbid.”

 

            Jack rests on a couch in the front parlor, watching the square outside. Ever since he’s started watching, there’ve been at least a dozen people wandering about, though not the same ones. He’s seen a few baffled-looking servants from the nearby houses step into the square with wooden shoes on, carrying brooms and buckets. They’d made halfhearted attempts to sweep up the glass, but their buckets filled quickly and then they didn’t empty them. Their equally baffled masters emerged later, only to sit beside their servants on their front steps, looking out at the glittering remains of one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

            Jack makes little bets with himself to guess who’ll go inside first.

            Aside from the people who live on the square, others have been walking up from the three streets that lead to it. Mostly, they all do the same thing. Stare for a while, glance furtively at the people around them, and then quickly stoop to take a shard of glass from the cobblestones. If they keep it up, the square will be clear in a few days. _And then what?_ he thinks.

            “How are you doing?” North asks, carrying a plate of lumpy biscuits over to the small table next to the sofa. “I made charmbread, have some. It was the only thing I knew how to make with the dry goods that had been left behind, and it has been decades since I had to make it, so it is not pretty and there are no raisins, and so this is a new point, really, since whenever I had an oven to make charmbread there was always the money for raisins, too…but this is not the point.”

            “I feel better than I did yesterday,” Jack says. “More like…a person, I suppose.” He stretches his legs out before him and takes a biscuit. “I was going to say more like myself, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been myself since I got my powers. Maybe a little bit around you. But mainly I was just trying to be someone that they wouldn’t have to kill. I thought I mostly was dangerous powers. But I’m power _and_ a person.” He looks out the window again. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do, now. Shouldn’t I be in school, or something? I’d like to meet people my own age. Is the king still my guardian?”

            North sits down on the couch next to Jack. “I think that since you are not so afraid of yourself anymore, the way you walk and act will help make a case for you to be old enough to be independent of the king. And after yesterday…all of the king’s schemes with magic are overturned. I know many of the ministers will be glad to be free of that worry.”

            “Yeah, most of them didn’t like me around as the king’s personal trump card, too bad none of them ever thought about how much I must hate it…oh, no.”

            “What is it?” North turns towards the window.

            “Someone’s coming towards the house. Everyone’s stayed away so far but I guess…ugh…this isn’t really a situation we can _hide_.” Jack slumps into the couch, but North stands and opens the curtains wider.

            “That is not just anybody! That’s Filip, my accountant! What in the world can he be doing here?”

 

            Filip’s face sags in relief when North opens the door. “Thank the stars, I finally found you,” he says.

            “Come inside.” North steps back to show him the hall. “You must need at least a little rest, I know you don’t live near here.”

            Filip’s eyes flick to the marble tile, still bearing Jack’s bloody footprints. “This is the light adept’s house. And yesterday people saw you with him and the shadow adept but…” he shakes his head. “I’d rather not come in, North. I followed too many wild rumors to find out where you might be, and there are even more than enough wild _truths_ to go around today. The wells…the magic of light and shadow…I feel like I’ve been branded. I’m sorry, I can’t _not_ speak of it.” He smiles uncertainly. “Maybe it was easier on people who aren’t accountants. But…anyway, I only sought you out as a favor to my daughter.”

            “The library page!”

            Filip nods and runs his hand over his face. “Well, she scared me and Hana half to death this morning, pounding on our door at the crack of dawn, I asked her where her key was and she said ‘who has time for things like keys?’ and it made sense at the time…I don’t think she was at her flat last night, but she couldn’t really have been swordfighting, could she? Maybe I’ve always had the wrong ideas about libraries…sorry.” He yawns. “I didn’t sleep well last night and everything seems very important and it’s rather disorienting. But I came out to find you to tell you that my daughter told me that Director Toothiana is safe, but under house arrest.

            “She also told me that Director Toothiana is actually a fire adept and so not to worry about the house arrest, but they had to do something because, and I quote, ‘you can’t steal a dusking great load of books from the palace while swinging a flaming sword and get away scott free, even if you were saving them from flooding, though me and the other girls all did’.”

            North smiles broadly. “This is a very good thing to know, and I am glad you have told me. Now,” he says, his expression growing more serious, “you have been out on the streets, what is it like?”

            Filip looks over his shoulder to the ruined square. “All anyone can talk about is the flood, and the pools—the moonpools, they’re called, aren’t they? That were under the well houses this whole time—being the source of the kingdom’s magic, and that magic being both light and shadow equally.

            “I don’t know about most people, but I…I never really thought of magic as something that could be so close to all of us. It was something for dreams and starstories and foreign lands. I didn’t think of it as something we needed, despite how important it seemed to the king, what with the laws about earth adepts, and the Frost boy, and the trouble with trying to keep the light adept safe from the shadow adept…though that last…there’s nothing that would make them enemies, necessarily, is there?

            “Sorry, again. I’m rambling. I suppose I’m realizing now that magic is something we needed. When the light adept was giving light away, those people that came to him, they knew that already. And I didn’t even know I should want anything more than a few dreams.” Filip put his hands in his pockets. “There’s a lot of things people don’t know, though. Or, at least, that I don’t know. Are we going to have light adepts everywhere, like before the Dimming? Is the Dreamweaver going to teach them? Is the Nightmare King going to teach new shadow adepts? Stars. And how did the moonpools get blocked up in the first place? Was it just a mistake? Like that story about a war that started because someone drew their sword to kill a snake that was going to bite their friend?”

            “Do you want to come inside and sit down?” North asks again. “You look like you could use a rest.”

            Filip laughs, and North suddenly thinks that he’s never heard him do so before. “I’m sure I do! I probably sound like it, too. I don’t know when the last time was that I let myself think about so many things. But the thing is, I don’t feel like I need to rest. I’m a little confused, yes, but I feel…happy, underneath it all. Even with the thought of my daughter swordfighting palace guards. The light seems brighter, today. And the shadows seem darker, too. I feel like…I feel. And I’m not going to wear out my feelings. I don’t have to hoard them!”

            He quirks his eyebrows at the people picking through the glass. “It looks like a disaster, doesn’t it? But I don’t feel like anything’s been taken away.” He looks to North again, and the house beyond. “I wish you well in whatever part you’re playing in this. I leave you to it, gladly. I’m going to go home to my wife and…well, maybe stay in until the newspapers start getting published again.”

 

            “What did he want?” Jack asks.

            “He was passing on a message from Tooth,” North says, returning to his seat on the couch. “She is all right for now. Apparently she broke into the palace wielding a flaming sword to save some books from the flood. I wish I could have seen that.” He stretches out his legs. “Also, it was not easy for him to find me, even with the autocarriage outside, and so I think it will be more difficult for anyone looking for you to find you here. And, finally, he did not know what happened to Sandy and Pitch, here in the square.”

            Jack pulls a blanket from the back of the sofa and wraps it around himself. “Well, it’s still early, I guess. The news hasn’t had time to spread.”

           

            The day passes slowly. Aster and Seraphina leave for a little while to go buy some supplies, on the grounds that they’re the least likely to be recognized, and when they return they have little specific news to tell. The markets weren’t as busy as usual, but a lot of people are at least trying to go on with the ordinary business of life.

            “I did overhear one person talking about what they’d seen at Fountain Square, though,” Seraphina mentions to the others when they gather in the kitchen. “Not clearly enough to hear what they concluded, but the person they were talking to said ‘No!’ really loudly afterwards, so I think we can assume that rumors of Sandy’s death are spreading.” She drums her fingers on the kitchen table. “Bunny, how many people do you think were watching, at the end? I wasn’t exactly thinking of counting.”

            Aster scrunches up his nose as he thinks. “Maybe a couple thousand? But not everyone could see clearly, and the people that could might not have recognized what was happening. I was only able to understand because you told me that Sandy had told you he was afraid to die. I’ve tried to understand magic as best I could my whole life, but I still don’t think I would have guessed that I was seeing the completion of…well, of a human sacrifice. And everyone else…why would it occur to them at all? It wasn’t like a prophecy or something that everyone knew about.”

            “I know,” Seraphina says. She puts her elbows on the table and props up her chin in her hands. “But Sandy’s song, even at the end…it echoed through my bones, and then it stopped. Pitch didn’t try to hide what he was doing. I don’t know. I think people are going to piece it together. Someone’s going to remember that we carried Pitch and Sandy here, even if they only got a glimpse of us while they were dodging glass.”

            “Even so,” North says, “I do not think we are going to get an angry mob. The new knowledge Sandy gave everyone means they know that what has been coming from the palace about magic was wrong. If Pitch was walking around the city in front of everyone I am sure there would be riots—eventually—but…” He looks around at the others. “This may be cruel to say, but what most people in the city needed and wanted from Sandy has been given to them ten times over with the release of the moonpool water. Nothing has been taken away. Sandy was always a starstory figure, spinning dreams from his island. Pitch, too, even when he visited the city. I think everyone is going to be too busy trying to learn how to think and live in a land with magic again than worrying about the man who bled for it.”

            “What about the adepts, though?” Aster asks. “The magic here—light and shadow—it’ll shape the people by the sources. Adepts _will_ appear. And with that flood yesterday, I wouldn’t bank on that being the only change. Magic does a lot more than just make things vaguely better. People are going to demand someone with answers.”

            North nods. “But they have a few answers right now, and living is enough of a question in this new day. Most people in this city and in the kingdom have lived without thinking of magic as anything more than wonderful dreams their whole lives. Now they are drinking it, bathing in it, washing with it.”

            “But it’s _Sandy’s_ _blood_ they’re doing those things with!” Seraphina shouts, making Jack hunch behind his mug of ancient river water.

            “They do not know Sandy,” North says. “We barely know Sandy. Let us be grateful for indifference, for now. It gives us some space to think. Let us be grateful that the only one who knows Sandy well enough to riot for him at this _exact_ moment is upstairs lying next to him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you even do while waiting for someone to come back from the dead?


	29. Warmth Better than the Sun's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy and Pitch return to life and consciousness. Toothiana pays a visit to the house on Fountain Square. There is much discussion of scars and bodies.

            The warmth of a hand in his own. The sensation is the first thing he knows and he is glad to know nothing else for some time. How long, he has no way of knowing. Minutes. Hours.

            He does not move, and after more indefinable time passes, he realizes he does not have the strength to do so. He does not even have the strength to open his eyes, though he can feel the sun shining on his face. It feels good, like the essence of life itself, but he finds he prefers the fingers against his own. Their warmth feels rarer somehow, more precious, though at this moment he does not know enough about himself to say why this should be so.

            Sun-warmth. Body-warmth. Blanket-warmth on his legs. Cool breeze on his face. So many good things.

            And yet, this weakness. It feels strange to him. And with this weakness, why the pain in his throat? As if he’d screamed it raw. For what?

            He breathes, and his lungs feel heavy and strange, as if he hadn’t been breathing before. How could that be right?

            And whose hand is he holding?

            His mind drifts away into the sunlight. His lost strength is there, diffused, and he’ll take it in until he’s strong enough to open his eyes. More will be revealed, then. More will always be revealed. As long as he’s alive. But why wouldn’t he be? Another mystery, another wordless feeling.

            Fingers twitch against his own. They hold him tighter than before. They feel like very long fingers, but whose fingers are not long compared to his?

            But who would hold his hand for so long?

            The light on his face is sunset light, now. He thinks a fire may have been lit in the room, the way that heat has changed. How strange, how such a little change can allow him to guess so much. He is in a room, with a fireplace. He is in a bed, breathing gently, and someone is holding his hand. He is weak, and his throat hurts, but no one is asking him to speak or be strong, so neither of those things is too troubling. He does not have the energy to be troubled.

            And yet…there is something strange, so strange about all of this, but why should it be strange, surely this is familiar to him from when he was a child, from illness and recovery then, but how long ago was that? So long, it feels like centuries… _centuries_! Fragments of memory flay his comfort like shards of glass flying through thin silk.

            The song. The sacrifice. Pitch and the knife and the water and all the light gone, sunsetting and Pitch’s face the last thing he saw as he died. And now he has woken but he is not singing and he cannot see, has he been rejected from the harmony of the Long Song after all? And is he now in the Dark Land, too weak to move, in too much pain to speak and make his intentions known, eyes forever shut? _Good!_ He thinks, even at that. If he is in the Dark Land he is dead, and if he is dead that means that he managed to give all his life, his light and his blood, and the city will be saved.

            But, no. He can still feel the light on his face. He can feel clothes on his body, and the hand in his own. He has not been consigned to oblivion. Sorrow and panic well up from the pit of his stomach and threaten to choke him. If he’s alive, that means he’s failed. If he’s alive, that means he has to do it again.

            He wants to shake, he wants to howl and sob. He can’t do it again. He can’t. He can’t face the knife again; he can’t ask Pitch to wield it again. He was supposed to die, and he had prepared to die, and now he’s not dead and so he’ll have to prepare for death again and he simply _can’t_.

            And what has happened if the expected failed? Where is he? He wants to open his eyes but he cannot. All he can do is drown in the knowledge that he has not earned rest of any kind, that his best efforts were worthless, and all the power he felt flowing through him was as nothing when contained by his human frailty. If he knew where Pitch was, if he could move, he would travel as far away from Pitch as he could, hiding his face in shame at having asked for so much and producing so little. And should not Pitch have always loathed him, staying within the shelter of the light adepts after their terrible crime against Pitch? Now he would recognize that, surely. Perhaps Pitch woke even now amid a sea of hate for the weak adept who could not even manage to die for a cause he believed in—

            “I don’t want to choke them,” he hears a voice—Seraphina’s voice, how strange—say. He latches onto it as a buoy out of the whirlpool of his thoughts.

            “If they’re alive, they need water, and probably this water more than most,” another voice says—Bunny? “We’ll just have to be really careful.”

            He hears a gasp. “He’s breathing again! Look! Look at Sandy!” Seraphina says, her voice growing softer.

            “Good,” Bunny says after a pause. “I don’t really know about these things, but it seems like that’s a sign that he’ll be waking soon. You wouldn’t want to be breathing during an eternal sleep, right? Your lungs would get full of dust.”

            Seraphina laughs softly. “And Pitch? What about you?” Silence, then, “Good.”

            _Good?_ Sandy feels as though his breath may well stop. Seraphina spoke to Pitch as if he was near, very near. _As if it was his hand Sandy was holding_. No, no! That couldn’t be! And yet are not those fingers telling him even now of a familiarity painfully longed for? Of course the hand in his own is Pitch’s. Who else’s hand could it be? Only the impossibility of the idea had kept him from recognizing those fingers at once, that hand for which he had made a knife handle based only on memory and sight. But if this is Pitch’s hand, then Sandy must be burning him—unless his light is gone. But if his light is gone he should be dead, and he is not dead. So he must have kept some light and he must then be hurting Pitch and why does Light not prevent this?

            Ah, but Pitch would of course have been stronger, at the end, strong enough to overcome the resistance of light to harm and he would have assumed that it didn’t matter now and he would have reached out. But now, even with the moonpool water freed Sandy had failed and the moonpools could easily be closed again, and even if they were not the people of the Lunar Kingdom would never know why the must not be closed, and they would never believe him, corrupt as they would surely see he was, if he told them that the shadow adepts were to be loved just as the light adepts were, just as he loved Pitch.

            And corrupt as he was, even if he could force himself to make the sacrifice again, it would be worthless now, worthless forever…

            A gentle hand pulls his mouth open and a thin stream of cool water runs along the inside of his cheek. He finds he has the strength at least to swallow reflexively, and the moonpool water—he will never forget its taste again—soothes his throat far more than mere water should.

            “Tell him…it worked.” The voice is such a thin whisper, Sandy barely recognizes it as Pitch’s, but Pitch’s it is. It worked? But surely Pitch must be mistaken. How could Sandy be alive if it had worked?

            Sandy hears a clunk as if from a pitcher being set down hurriedly on at wooden nightstand. “Don’t try to speak,” Seraphina says. “And don’t—you’ll wear yourself out again—I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him.” Footsteps. “Sandy,” she begins, speaking softly beside him, “you succeeded. The moonpools are open now. They washed the city and I think everyone drank the water. And everyone knows that the moonpool water is the source of this land’s magic, and that it allows both light adepts and shadow adepts to appear. And that light and shadow are equally native to this land, and equally good.

            “I knew this as soon as the moonpool water touched my skin yesterday, and it’s still ringing in my head, impossible to ignore. Someone North knows came to the house earlier and he knew those things, too.” She places her hand lightly on his forehead. “I can’t tell you this in the magic language where you can only speak the truth, but it _is_ truth, Sandy.” She pauses, and removes her hand. “I saw you fall, Sandy. If you can hear my voice now, which Pitch thinks you can, it’s because of something he did. I don’t really understand it. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

            The sick panic in Sandy begins to subside. What Seraphina says sounds true, especially as the memory of Pitch’s face at one of the moonpools comes back to him. Such determination—if anyone could have found a loophole, it would have been Pitch. So it doesn’t matter that they’re holding hands, after all. Sandy’s work as a light adept is done. Still, he doesn’t want to hurt Pitch. How long before the harm he did to Pitch with his touch drained away enough of his light adept nature that he didn’t burn Pitch with his touch? Had the time already passed? Did he even have a light adept nature anymore, if Pitch had brought him back from the brink of death?

            These unanswerable questions don’t press upon him with the urgency they might, with Pitch’s hand in his own, and he drifts once more into sleep.

 

            Seraphina, North, Bunny, and even Jack all wake him up a few more times over the course of—well, he’s not quite sure. He thinks days, but without gathering light or doing anything to interact with the world, it’s hard to tell. They bring him moonpool water, and this is what he wakes for. He guesses they turn and wash him, too, but if he wakes at all for these ministrations, he wakes only partially.

            Always, when he wakes fully, Pitch’s hand is in his.

            From the conversations of the others, he gathers that Pitch opens his eyes when they bring him water, but he hasn’t said anything since he demanded Seraphina reassure Sandy. If Sandy had to guess, he’d say that Pitch is probably using the little strength he has to find Sandy’s fingers with his own. Sandy wants to laugh at the thought, laugh and cry until he gets the most horrible hiccups, and then Pitch can embrace him, rub his back and say soothing things and all will truly be well. He can’t, though. The laughter would still hurt his throat and even hiccups would call for strength he does not have.

            He finally opens his eyes one late afternoon, when Seraphina brings him more moonpool water. “Welcome back,” she says with a smile. Sandy tries to smile back, but doesn’t feel like he really manages it.

            “Now that I know for sure you’re awake,” Seraphina says, “I’d like to prop you up so I can give you more water. Does that sound all right?”

            Sandy replies with the smallest nod.

            “I bet you’re wondering what’s been happening out in the city while you’ve been asleep.” Seraphina smiles wryly as she tips the cup into Sandy’s mouth. “Unfortunately, I can’t really help you with the subtleties, though every night North’s been reading this newspaper that’s switched over so that it’s devoted to nothing but. The main thing I caught was that a big group of Outlander Eminences are calling for a repeal of the laws against earth adepts, since obviously their presence in the kingdom wasn’t causing the lack of our own native magic.”

            Sandy shifts his gaze from her to the open window. “I know,” she says. “I don’t really want to think about those sort of things, either, but it seems like a lot of things could change really quickly. North says that the king basically banked on the relationship he claimed with you, and later, Jack, in order to get people to do what he wanted. Now, he’s got a lot less power.

            “I don’t know how I feel about that. When things didn’t involve magic, he’s been good for the city. I feel safe. I feel like he really wanted the best for the Lunar Kingdom…but then again, maybe that was just the city. That’s what the paper seems to be saying he was doing—letting everything but the royal province just fend for itself. Sorry, Sandy. You’ll have to ask North about this, if you even want to know.”

            Sandy looks back at her. The moonpool water’s energized him enough so that he can offer her a true smile, if a small one. He hopes it begins to contain his thanks, for both water and the news. What a wonder to still be around and hearing it. He won’t be able to deal with it with the attention it deserves for some time, but he thinks he’s done quite enough for the Lunar Kingdom already.

            The next day, close to noon, he finds it easier to stay awake after being given water, and finds enough strength, too, to turn to look at Pitch, and squeeze his hand. Slowly, Pitch turns to look at him, and—oh! Here they are, finally, lying in the same bed, looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands skin to skin.

            It’s wonderful, but it’s not the past brought back. “Your eyes,” mouths Sandy, his voice still not fully recovered from a full day of singing songs of power.

            “Is the gold gone?” Pitch asks, in a voice only slightly stronger.

            “Yes,” Sandy breathes.

            “It was light. For you. It was your name. I couldn’t let you go, even in the darkness. Darkness let me keep you. My first secret as a shadow worker.”

            Sandy brushes the edge of Pitch’s hand with his thumb. “Shadow’s favorite.”

            “That’s you,” Pitch says. “It saved you in the end.”

            Sandy doesn’t argue, though when he gets his voice back, he plans to say a great deal about what it means when favorites have to face such treatment from the entities they’re favorites of.

            They pause, and doze, each taking long, long moments of wakefulness to memorize the new face of the other. In the midst of the shattering fountain, both had suffered dozens of lacerations on their faces, arms, and hands.

            Sandy catches Pitch’s gaze after one such long look. “Guess we…shouldn’t have expected…to get this old…without a few lines on our faces.”

            Their laughter doesn’t sound much like laughter, yet, as it brings Bunny running into the room in alarm.

            Later, under the buttery moonlight that is one of the glories of this time of year, Pitch whispers, “Never hurt. You’re still light. How?”

            “Moonpool water,” Sandy replies, with barely a sound. Pitch can read his lips well enough in light like this. “Both magics. Zalla and Nur…didn’t notice. Moonpool water everywhere, every day. Us…too much separation. Not enough moonpool water, even before. Then blocked.”

            Pitch’s face opens in understanding, and he lightly squeezes Sandy’s hand. “I’m glad at least one thing could be simple,” he says before drifting off again.

           

            Soon, they recover enough to ask for food—Pitch insists that North go to a particular bakery at a particular time to get apple turnovers—and to walk through the house with someone’s arm supporting them.

            On the day when Pitch, who is recovering faster than Sandy, takes his first slow, unsupported steps, Toothiana knocks on their door, accompanied by two expressionless members of the king’s militia.

            “Have you come to arrest us?” Sandy asks when he answers the door, hand on North’s arm, his tone far too blasé for someone who can yet barely speak, in Pitch’s opinion.

            “These are my guards,” Toothiana explains. “They’re meant to keep me from fleeing the city. I was just informed by council letter this morning that I was no longer under house arrest, so I decided to take advantage of it before I got a royal letter that said I still _was_ under house arrest. Truth be told, I hope that the council letter is a sign that whoever would have been responsible for making a case against me has decided there are much more important things to worry about now—or that I should be given a medal for saving all those books.” She stands up straighter, revealing a librarian-green shirt collar behind her coat.

            “Please, come in,” Sandy says, and she does, though the guards, after a glance at everyone visible in the house, settle in to wait outside.

            North scoffs at them, and leads Tooth to the front parlor, helping Sandy settle comfortably into one of a pair of chairs when they get there. He leaves to go get tea things, and Sandy smiles widely at Toothiana. “Well? I thought you’d be more surprised to see me.”

            Toothiana laughs, then pulls her face into a more solemn expression. “I’m sorry if I’m not taking this seriously enough. But even after being arrested, I haven’t felt this alive since I was learning my first fire rites. And on the day of opening the moonpools, I was open to magic—of any kind—more than I had ever been. I’ve told you before that fire magic is all about change. You were changing the city that day, and your…death…would have been the start of one immense change…so I…I could feel you dying. It was in the water. And then…you were dying, and then you weren’t.” She falls silent, and remains so for several long moments. “I was glad of the house arrest,” she continues. “I felt that as soon as I regained my strength, I might become a danger to others. My own magic feels like it’s being constantly called upon since the moonpool water was freed. I think it’s because of my recent transformation. I wonder if the land can tell that I’m not a native of this place. I wonder if I’d feel the same way in Windburne, or Verd.” She shrugs. “But then again, maybe the feeling that I might lash out to define myself isn’t inherently related to any magic. After all, I did decide to assert my librarian-ness by breaking into the palace with a flaming sword.” She sighs, and folds her gloved hands in her lap. “Still, I know how to be careful. In some ways, at least.” She raises her ruby-red eyes to Sandy. “The green glasses are gone forever.”

            “Good,” says Sandy. “I’m glad you’ve decided that.”

            “You sound like you’re amazed that any decisions could be made.”

            “I am.” Sandy looks out the window to the mostly cleared square. North’s autocarriage has even been moved to the house’s disused stables, thanks to some determined pulling from Seraphina and North and the use of Bunny’s astonishing strength to lift the vehicle enough to get it off the ledge. Seraphina and North had both told the story to Pitch and Sandy, and both had been shocked that Bunny could do that. Bunny didn’t comment. Sandy thinks he can guess where Bunny stood while lifting; it’s the only place on the square where weeds are growing up through the cobblestones. “I’m astonished that ordinary life is getting on at all. But I suppose it must. Harvest coming in and all.”

            He laughs quietly. “Harvest! Toothiana, I don’t even know when people are going to start showing that they can work with light or shadow. Tomorrow? In ten years? And then we’ll have to teach them! I don’t know the first thing about teaching; I avoided it specifically when I was young…all I want is just a little time.”

            He closes his eyes and leans his head back. “Just a little time to not care at all. Let everything take care of itself for a while. I want…” He opens his eyes to look back at Toothiana. “You haven’t said a thing about the cuts on my face. Why not?” He asks, abruptly changing the subject.

            “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about them,” Toothiana says evenly. “I knew a few fire adepts with terrible burn scars. Only one would talk about how she got them. The first time she built the fire she must pass through to become an adept, Fire rejected her.” She gives Sandy a long look. “Your scars will be much neater, and you were accepted, not rejected, and yet…”

            “And yet,” Sandy repeats, his left hand clenching reflexively, pulling on the skin around his largest wound. “I don’t know if I want to talk about them. I just wanted to know that you’re reading them. I want everyone to know that I have them because the Great Moon Fountain _had_ to shatter, because no matter how beautiful it was, it was part of something old and terrible…”

            “Did someone mention me?” Pitch says, interrupting Tooth’s solemn nod as he steps through the doorway slowly, his hand resting on the wall.

            “Where’s your cane?” Sandy asks, his voice louder than it’s been for the whole of his conversation with Toothiana.

            “I have it.” North appears behind him holding a tray of tea things, a simple ebony cane hooked over his wrist. Pitch makes a sour face, which Sandy exaggerates back at him.

            “There’s no one here you need to pretend to be well for, Pitch,” Sandy says. Pitch’s frown grows deeper, but he takes the cane from North’s arm and makes his way over to the chair next to Sandy. He reaches out to take Sandy’s hand and traces a finger slowly along the soft skin between the cuts.

            “No one I need to pretend for, but I would like to prove that I am well enough for _you_ ,” Pitch murmurs underneath the bustle of North unloading the tea tray. Sandy feels a blush rising in his cheeks, but he can’t continue the conversation they need to have, at least not while they have a guest.

            “So, Toothiana,” Sandy begins, his mind still running along the trail traced by Pitch, “we began talking of other things so quickly, I forgot to ask you what brings you here today.”

            Her response is equally distracted and conventional, as she has just stopped herself from laying her hand on North’s arm to let him know that he’s added enough milk to her tea, thank you, their eyes meeting in the knowledge of the intent of the gesture and the impossibility of its completion. “I was on my way to do a few other things and decided that I wanted to stop by and see how you were doing…”

            Pitch scoffs and she shakes her head, picking up her teacup and moving reluctantly away from North. “Very well. I came here because I knew this was where North was, and thus probably where Jack was, and where you and Sandy were, if you were anywhere.” She takes a deep breath. “I wouldn’t know where to find any other adepts in the city. And I needed to be around people who…were part of it all. Like I was.” She gives the others a small smile. “The city’s going to see me as the fire adept who broke into the palace to save a secret library, wielding a flaming pirate sword, and that’s mostly what I want. I want to be somewhat dashing, somewhat intimidating, somewhat uncivilized. Sandy, if you thank me, publicly, for saving those books, I think that’ll give me enough fame, and enough of a connection with you, that I’ll be able to remain director of the Great Library. Which is what I think I want.”

            “What else is it that you want?” North asks quietly, avoiding her eyes with a casualness Sandy recognizes, seeing that North knows he could hold her here but will not allow himself to ask this of her, not even tacitly.

            “I want to re-learn how to be a fire adept,” she says. “I suppressed that part of myself for so long, telling myself I was content as a fire worker, that despite what the Heartflame Pit had told me, my calling was elsewhere. So it is for many fire workers. But not for me, now. By rights, Sandy, I shouldn’t have been able to do what you asked me to do. After over ten years of trying to forget every fire-working I had ever learned, to kindle my adept fire and come out of it so unscathed? It shouldn’t have been possible. As an ordinary fire adept, too, I would have…cooled, by now. I haven’t. If I don’t think about it, my touch would instantly burn any of you. Even when I do think about it, only a few minutes might be possible. While I am not changed as much as I could have been, I am changed. I don’t have a framework for understanding that anymore. I came here today because I thought that you, Sandy and Pitch, might be able to talk to me about…what has changed. What you can feel changing. I think this goes beyond the Lunar Kingdom, something is pulling on my bones and I…”

            “I haven’t reached out to Light since I woke,” Sandy admits.

            “Nor I to Shadow,” Pitch says.

            “But I know it must be done, sometime,” Sandy continues. “I need light, not just water.” He frowns slightly. “And I should not be afraid to see what changes we have wrought.”

            “If you’re not ready…” Pitch glances at Toothiana from the corners of his eyes.

            “I don’t think it’s urgent,” Toothiana says. “Maybe it’s something that happens to all new fire adepts, and I just don’t know about it.”

            “You do not believe that,” says North.

            “No.” She pauses. “But I don’t think you’ll mind, North. If this city is where the change begins, it’s to this city that I’ll have to return.”

            “But I thought you were staying to be Director.”

            “If they let me, and if there isn’t anything I need to do among the adepts of the Empire. If these letters don’t change things even more.” She rests her hand on the satchel she set beside her chair when she sat down. “I did mean it when I said I was stopping by here on the way to do something else. In the years I’ve been here, I wrote a lot of letters to people I knew in the Empire. Friends. Family. I was always too afraid to send them, as correspondence with the Empire might have revealed me. Most of the people I’ve written to probably think I’m dead.” She weaves the strap through her fingers. “Now that I’m known as a fire adept, nothing’s stopping me from sending all the letters. I’m going to find a ship going to Scoria and send them on.”

            “May I walk with you?” asks North. He turns to Pitch and Sandy. “That is, if you will be all right. Jack is still here, and Seraphina and Bunny—”

            “We’ll be fine, North,” Sandy says, holding Pitch’s hand tighter despite the pressure it places on their cuts.

            “I’d like it if you walked with me,” Toothiana says, curling her gloved hands into loose fists. A reminder.

 

            “Sandy,” Pitch murmurs once they’re gone, “do you think you can make it upstairs?”

            Sandy’s heart pounds and he wants to say yes, but it wouldn’t be true, at least not without getting more worn out than either he or Pitch wants him to be now. Perhaps he hesitates a bit too long, because Pitch continues on, his slow murmur building to a frantic babble.

            “And maybe it seems strange to you that I can still think of such things, after all, neither of us is really well yet, we almost died, stars, maybe we did die but here we are again, you brought magic back to the city but aren’t we still human yet? I love the warmth of your hand, Sandy”—his voice cracks—“I never thought I’d get the chance to touch you again, so isn’t that enough? But I’m greedy, Sandy, so greedy, and who knows what can change? Toothiana and North thought they had time but they didn’t, Sandy—stars, I feel like I’m sixteen again, but—oh, Sandy, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be mythic, it doesn’t have to be anything at all. I just want your skin on mine.”

            “Pitch.” Sandy knows he’s blushing, but why not? If Pitch feels sixteen again, let Sandy be eighteen again. “I can’t make it upstairs, but I think if you help me, I’ll be able to make it to the couch.”

            They shuffle the few steps to the couch, Sandy’s hand on Pitch’s arm, Pitch supporting himself with the cane. And Sandy starts to laugh, perhaps the loudest sound he’s made yet since waking up. “Sun and Moon, Pitch! Our little steps, your cane, the lines on our faces—we’re old! We’re really old!”

            Pitch smiles at him and shakes his head. “Thought we’d never get here,” he says.

            Sandy settles at one end of the couch. He unties his quilted robe and his hands fall to the hem of his loose shirt. “You’d better keep me warm,” he says as he begins to remove the robe, trying to turn the necessity of the slow, deliberate speed at which he must move into a striptease of sickroom pajamas. He glances up at Pitch, worried now at the awkwardness of the moment, wondering if he shouldn’t have asked him to wait longer, if his body, unchanged for so long, is the one that Pitch remembers.

            When he meets Pitch’s eyes, however, he sees only a sort of stunned desire there, over a wicked grin that was never Kozzy’s, only Pitch’s. Warmth floods Sandy’s limbs as he realizes, again, that he finally won’t have to turn away that glorious grin or pretend it doesn’t inflame him. He will still be a light adept, and he will have his shadow adept.

            “I intend to,” breathes Pitch, shrugging off his robe. His hands rise to the ties of his shirt collar and he pauses. “Sandy,” he says, “You’re just as I imagined you…often imagined you…but it won’t be the same when you see me. I never told you because…despite my other foolishness, I knew you wouldn’t take kindly to an offer from me to undress, when we couldn’t touch.”

            “Not more scars?” Sandy asks, pushing himself up as much as he can. “Pitch, have you hidden injuries from me because you thought I wouldn’t want to what, face temptation? Because—well, I would not have been able to be dangerous to whoever hurt you, though I assure you, I would have wanted to be, and I guess that would have been another temptation to lose my connection to Light, but you know I’m strong, don’t you?”

            “Not injuries, Sandy. Nothing like that. I think I should just show you.” He unlaces the neckline of his shirt and pulls it over his head, revealing a chest covered in writing. “Tattoos,” he explains, his skin turning to gooseflesh in the fireless room. “Tattoos of shadow, in Erebusian. The things the shadow adepts did not want to risk losing.” He shakes his head. “Some of it’s probably not even true, not with what we know about Light and Shadow now.”

            “Reminders,” Sandy whispers. “Reminders of…everything, yes?”

            “Reminders of how my flesh had been claimed,” says Pitch.

            Sandy’s gaze roves over him. Underneath the tattoos, he still has the lean, just-filled out frame Sandy had last seen at the moonpool under Broadhand corner. Then, the Erebusian on his lover’s skin would have horrified him. Then, he believed that light and shadow were meant to never touch. That he was not to have a shadow adept. Now, the whole city knows that light and shadow are part of the one magic of the Lunar Kingdom. Sandy doesn’t even recall where the Broadhand corner moonpool fell in the sequence on the equinox. And now, he can have his shadow adept.

            He feels wicked, and he feels wild, despite the lingering weakness of his body. “Pitch,” he says, “I do believe I’m going to learn Erebusian much quicker this time than the last time you tried to teach me.”

            A slow smile grows on Pitch’s face and he kneels on the couch in front of Sandy. “You’re not taking this entirely seriously, are you?”

            “I am _never_ going to take anything entirely seriously ever again,” Sandy says. “And…besides,” he gulps and reaches out to place his hand flat on the center of Pitch’s chest. “I rather think I claimed your flesh years before you marked it with tattoos.”

            Pitch gasps, and Sandy can feel his pulse under his fingers. Pitch covers Sandy’s hand with his one of his own while the other grasps the back of the couch so he can steady himself.

            “Pitch.” Sandy’s golden eyes meet his, all darkly silver now. “I am tired of holding you with my gaze. I want to hold you with my arms. Stop holding yourself apart from me.”

            “Yes, Sandy,” Pitch breathes, and lowers himself down to settle on top of Sandy. He wants to press against Sandy’s soft, warm, skin, all the plushness of his form, until he drowns in the feeling, but it may not be that time yet. “Let me know if I’m too heavy,” he says, letting his lips brush against Sandy’s ear and only barely stopping himself from giving it a tender bite.

             “I’ve wanted your weight on me for a long time,” Sandy says. He spreads his knees so Pitch’s body lies between his thighs. “I’ve wanted…” He stokes his hands along Pitch’s sides, pausing briefly at his waist before continuing down to the bony tops of his hips, just visible above the hemline of his loose trousers. “I wanted so much and you never helped when I saw you.” His hands move around to Pitch’s back, and Pitch buries his face in his shoulder as Sandy’s gentle hands make their way over his old, old, scars. “I wanted to become familiar with these,” he says, his breath catching. “How terrible that must make me. At the moonpool I think I reacted properly, but after some decades…” he laughs a little, and Pitch, feeling the laugh, makes a sound that Sandy only feels as well, muffled as it is by his skin. “I grew to think of your scars as unbearably erotic, in my weaker moments. A sign of you as Pitch, rather than…anyone else. Forgive me.”

            Pitch kisses his throat and lifts his head to meet Sandy’s eyes. “ _I wish for my lips to touch every inch of your raised flesh/I burn as you would burn, have burned/In torment, I wish to reawaken yours_ ,” he quotes. “That was yours?”

            Sandy blushes. “How did you remember that?”

            “Because I always wished that you were the one who had written it,” Pitch says. “And of course I forgive you. I would not want any part of me to bring you only sorrow. It was unjust how I gained the scars, but they’re part of my shape now. I’m glad you want me with them.” He cups Sandy’s cheek in his hand and smiles, showing a glint of teeth. “I never knew your desires were so fleshly, though, even then. A curious thing for a light adept, no?”

            “I felt very guilty about it, I assure you,” Sandy says, continuing to trace out Pitch’s scars. “That my love still burned so strong in all ways…that violence had led to something I found desirable…that what I wanted was the one thing absolutely forbidden to me. And I never told anyone. Very curious for a light adept. But we were never called to be typical, were we?”

            “Not at all,” Pitch says. He leans into Sandy, then, and kisses him. Their lips meet softly at first, Pitch for his part almost hesitant. Sandy, however, opens his mouth after only a few moments, pressing his tongue into Pitch’s mouth, greedily tasting him.

            “You’re different,” he murmurs against Pitch’s lips, Pitch, who has determined to follow Sandy’s lead because he doesn’t want to and maybe _can’t_ think beyond the immediate touches between him and Sandy; so dizzy is he with the kiss that Sandy has to repeat himself. “You taste different,” Sandy says, bringing his hands up to undo the tie around Pitch’s hair and to make sure he doesn’t move away, looking affronted and worried, which Sandy feels him try to do. “Is it because of the shadow you drink?”

            Pitch’s hair falls around their faces in a thick black curtain, making Sandy’s eyes glint brighter in contrast. He always looks younger with unbound hair and Sandy kisses the corner of his mouth because he wants to, because he can, and because there’s plenty of time for that question to get answered.

            “Probably,” Pitch manages. “You,” he says huskily, “you taste like starlight. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. No wonder I got light-drunk so easily on the island.”

            Sandy thinks that can’t be quite right, but he’s not going to argue now. He kisses him again and again, until the edge of urgency wears away and their kisses become lazier, messier, Pitch and Sandy each becoming reacquainted with each other’s mouths. Pitch nips at Sandy’s lower lip and Sandy inhales sharply in surprise.

            “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Pitch asks.

            Sandy giggles and licks his lips as he looks up at Pitch. He tries to pull him closer using his legs, and guides Pitch back down. “The stories said that shadow adepts are dangerous and cruel lovers” he says softly, before placing at kiss at the edge of Pitch’s jaw at the top of his long, beautiful neck. He sucks at a spot just below where he kissed and Pitch groans. “You didn’t hurt me, Pitch. I like feeling your teeth. I like knowing that I can.”

            “Sandy,” Pitch says, and “Sandy” again. He shifts his hips and Sandy laughs softly, a little ruefully, against his skin.

            “You’re still more recovered than I am,” he says, and feels a blush under his lips when he returns them to Pitch’s throat.

            “I’m going to be the one having to recover soon if you keep sucking on my neck like that,” Pitch says, his voice tight.

            “Good,” says Sandy, and Pitch reluctantly pushes himself up.

            “What do you mean, good? What about you? Here I am, squashing you into the couch, that’s no good, I’m sure—would it help if—I mean, do you want my mouth?”

            “Pitch.” Sandy reaches up runs his fingers through Pitch’s long black hair, a little greasy now given the difficulty of caring for it over the past several days. Sandy prefers it to all silk. “Just you wait till I’ve recovered. But I don’t think it’s going to work out today, no matter what you do.”

            “What do you want, then?”

            “I want you to keep on keeping me warm,” Sandy says, “if you can stand it. I want to keep kissing you, touching you…I want you to keep kissing me, touching me…”

            Pitch looks down at Sandy’s relaxed golden gaze, his flushed cheeks, his mussed golden curls. “I can work with that,” he says. He looks to the side. “But I’m probably going to embarrass myself anyway.”

            “Am I that overwhelming, even when I’m just lying here?” Sandy teases.

            “I assume you’ve noticed that ‘here’ is underneath me with legs wrapped around mine,” Pitch says, trying and failing for a dry tone.

            He compensates for the loss of his composure with another long, deep kiss.

 

            Jack walks in as Pitch begins to kiss along the wound on Sandy’s forearm, an act so perversely life-affirming that Sandy wonders if he might not be a little stronger than he originally thought. Jack’s startled and hasty apology, however, breaks the mood somewhat, forcing them both to remember that the world and all its complexities still hurries along outside the room.

            “We’re decent, Jack, you can come in again,” Pitch calls once he and Sandy wear their robes once more. Still, his hand is twined in Sandy’s, and he doesn’t intend to break that bond unless absolutely necessary for the next, oh, several decades, if possible.

            “What did you want?” Sandy asks when Jack sidles back in, looking perhaps more like an invalid than either of them now, with no healthy blush on his cheeks.

            “I just read in one of the new papers that Seraphina and Aster have been bringing around that the king is going to hold an open Supplication Day tomorrow. With the whole council present, too.”

            “Truly open?” Jack nods, and Sandy shakes his head to clear it—though letting go of Pitch’s hand might be more effective for that purpose, he doesn’t even consider it. “But there hasn’t been an open Supplication Day since his grandfather ascended the throne. I remember the uproar with the changes.”

            Jack shrugs. “The paper didn’t say why, exactly, but it seems like a lot of the older council members and the ones from the country provinces, too, want to change some things like that. Also, since the Supplication Day on the equinox got interrupted, the king apparently tried to cancel it altogether.”

            Pitch snorts. “What a blockhead. What did he think would happen after that? No wonder he hasn’t been able to find anyone to agree to be his queen or heir.”

            “Pitch.” Sandy turns to him. “We should go. I have some things I want to say to the king, and if the whole council and a crowd is there, so much the better. And…if you’ll allow it…I want to make them look at you.”

            “Allow it? I’d like to force them to see me, too. Anyway,” his voice drops, “you’ll need someone to support you as you walk.”

            “Um.” Jack almost rocks back on his heels, thinks better of it, and fusses with the buttons on the edges of his sleeves instead.

            “Well, spit it out,” Pitch says. “It must have been important for you to interrupt us in the first place.”

            “I came in here to ask Sandy if he’d say something on my behalf.” Jack pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I took some notes on what I need you to say.”

            Even though the paper feels as heavy to Sandy as it looked like it felt to Jack as he handed it over, Sandy smiles as he reads it.

            Pitch, however, frowns deeply as his eyes skim over Jack’s notes. “Sandy, how can you? All of this is—”

            Sandy places two fingers on his lips to stop him speaking. “Now there’s a physical joy I missed. Don’t worry, Pitch. I’m well aware of what I can and cannot do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY! KISSING!


	30. Supplication Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandy gathers light for the first time since the equinox. Sandy and Pitch face the king on Supplication Day. They say farewell to North and Jack, and Sandy does something that has never been done before.

            Sandy kneels at the edge of the circle of golden brick in the back courtyard. Before him rests a glass pitcher from the kitchen. Pitch stands behind him and to the side, looking over his right shoulder. “I do not want you to waste your strength,” he says.

            “I know,” Sandy replies. “That’s why I’m asking you to do this. You’re the only one who can help me.”

            “And the only one who can harm you,” Pitch says, as he had said several times during their slow walk outside.

            Sandy sighs. “But you don’t want to. Look, Pitch. We’re not trying to mix magics.” He smiles. “Nothing about you is inimical to me. You know the tones and your voice is better than mine still and….” He curls his fingers around the cool sides of the pitcher. “I miss harmony.”

            “I know you do,” says Pitch. “And I suppose it makes sense that I should be able to sing the light-gathering songs again—look at me, standing in the afternoon sunlight without my hat and gloves! But I—I don’t know. It doesn’t seem quite right.”

            “Try.” Sandy looks up at him. “If I don’t have light before tomorrow, I’ll be facing the king just as weak as I am now. I don’t want to do that. I want to try to put on a bit of a show—like you did, when you became the Nightmare King.”

            “Very well.” Pitch crosses to the other side of the brick circle and kneels. He takes a large breath and doesn’t let it all out, his face tight. “I suppose you want to start right off with the origin tones.”

            Sandy grimaces. “Sorry. I know they’re tricky, and the ones I’ve been singing may not actually be the ones we learned, but it’s hard for me to think of any other song right now. And, I mean, it’s the first light-gathering after the opening of the moonpools. What could be more fitting?”

            “Isn’t there anything we can do that isn’t on some sort of symbolic timeline?” Pitch asks.

            “Thousands of things,” says Sandy with a smirk. “But I’ll need my strength back for all that, too.” He settles again into his light-gathering posture. “I don’t know if you’ll want to watch this too closely. I’m going to catch the first rays with my wounded arm.”

            “If I watch, are you going to make me write down the moment for posterity later?”

            This startles a wider smile onto Sandy’s face. “Only if you find you want to.” He pauses. “Perhaps you’ll prefer to just correct, annotate, and footnote my account.”

            “That would be a truly _ghastly_ text to work with,” Pitch says.

            “Well, we’ll always be around to explain what we really meant, if there’s any confusion.”

            “Sun and Moon, we _will_.” Pitch just looks at Sandy, his smile growing to match his.

            “Pitch,” Sandy says after a moment, “we’ll be around, but today’s light won’t. Are you ready to help?”

            “As much as I can,” Pitch says, serious at once.

            “Thank you.”

 Sandy begins. He breathes in, breathes out, slowly, deeply. This is simple and familiar, and it is not. He fears that Light will fill him until Sandy is no more if he lets it in again. He fears it will not.

            Across from him, he sees Pitch’s chest rise and fall as he synchronizes his breath with Sandy’s, for Sandy must of course be the lead here. Pitch. Pitch is with him, and when Pitch is with him, he will never _not_ be Sandy.

            He opens his mind and lets Light flow through him again, as itself, not just as a candle’s warmth to keep him alive.

            It does not blind him; it does not stun him. It greets him like the rise of a full moon within his veins, bright and familiar and—ah! Of course!—half-paired with an unseen shadow. It seems so simple now, he marvels again at the force of Zalla’s working, that no one could even imagine Light and Shadow as two halves of a whole magic in the Lunar Kingdom.

            The patterns settle again into the corners of his mind; the knowledge of the hour of sunrise and sunset and the phase of the moon returns to him. More returns as well, or perhaps arrives, but he feels he will need long years and a language subtler than Shining to describe it. All he could say now is that he feels Light, but it is different and he is different. Is it purer? No longer laboring under a secret; nestling against Shadow instead of defining itself against it? He feels amusement and gratefulness from somewhere, and perhaps something like an apology, though this is hard to say and far too human, anyway.

            Whatever it is, it allows Sandy to sing the first few notes of the Origin Tones knowing that he needn’t have worried. Light will never harm Sandy, a promise made long ago. He is a light adept, and always will be. The power of the equinox working is not alien to him, but his own, if he will only claim it again.

            Sandy’s voice is quiet but sure, and Pitch adds his own in harmony. He cannot lose himself in familiarity, as he sees Sandy does, but he does feel a pull of power calling to him in the song. It doesn’t feel exactly how it used to, when he gathered his own light in the circles, but the situation is not exactly how it used to be, so why should it feel so?

            Sandy’s hand passes slowly through the air, and Pitch’s blood hums with the power of it. Something of this is _his_ , no matter how intensely he must concentrate to find the next note to add.

            After a few more passes, he sees Sandy’s eyes dart to him in concern, and he realizes he is now standing, with no conscious thought of doing so. The next few notes from his mouth are louder, almost raucous, almost overpowering Sandy’s main melody as Pitch attempts to reassure him that he will not break their circle of two. And yet, it seemed _right_ to stand, even if it set their poses at variance, which the old light-gathering circles had avoided.

            Sandy’s next pass will be the one to grasp the late-afternoon sunlight, Pitch is sure of it, if only he can provide the proper support, the proper focus, though the notes almost seem to get lost on the way from his mind to his mouth. He wants to shake his head, smack himself. Surely, after the equinox, this should be easy. Surely he can do this for Sandy.

            Sandy’s hand arcs through a half circle. His voice is stronger than ever. One long note changes for another and joy wells up in Pitch as he sees brilliance touch Sandy’s fingertips. The unease of the tones falls away from him, though he can tell he’s still sharing in the power, still supporting the pattern that allows Sandy to turn light to drink.

            But why does Sandy’s expression change so? Pitch expected a smile of relief when the light began to cling to his hand, not for him to look at Pitch as if he was presenting him with an intricate puzzle, nor for him to smile almost immediately afterward as if he had solved the riddle.

            Pitch takes a breath, reaching for the next note, and finds his mind blank. Alarmed, he realizes he hadn’t been singing before this moment, either, so why is Sandy still smiling, why?

            In searching for the answer, Pitch discovers not a note coming to him, but an arc of his arm, and he finally notices that he no longer stands directly across from Sandy, but has moved partway around the circle of brick. No, not simply moved. Danced.

            The slow dance, all arcs and circles, compliments the Origin Tones like the dark side of the moon fitting against the light side, and Pitch allows as much of a sigh as he is able to fit into the measured breaths of the dance to escape from him. So. He is still a shadow adept through and through, and though shadow and light have been reunited with the release of the moonpool water, they are still different, and it is still not for him to sing songs of light gathering. But he can still aid a light adept, his light adept, his Sandy, with an Origin Dance, long lost until now for the absence of the accompanying music.

            Sandy curls his hand over the edge of the pitcher and the light fills it as rapidly as if it were a stream in spring flood.

 

            “What does it taste like?” Pitch asks Sandy across the kitchen table. Around them, the house is quiet. Aster and Seraphina have gone to attend to their own homes. North and Jack have left to deliver a message to Toothiana, asking her to come with them to the Supplication Day tomorrow, though they’ll be back soon, as North still worries about Sandy and Pitch’s safety. When they went, Sandy had wondered if Jack would be able to find an appropriate moment to let North know that Pitch and Sandy might much rather be left to themselves in the house. Probably not. No matter. They have plenty of time, after all, and they’ll shortly have as much solitude as they could wish. Sandy smiles at Pitch before taking another sip of the afternoon sunlight. If what he has planned works, the astonishment on Pitch’s face is going to be priceless, and neither of them will have to put up with his poor sailing.

            “Apples,” Sandy says. “Apples, and the barest hint of smoke. Restlessness. Shouting into the wind, but only in a dream.” He licks his lips, knowing that Pitch will watch his tongue. “Do you want some?”

            “If it’s making you stronger, you should have it all,” Pitch says. “Besides, I’m not sure if I should have light again. I don’t have light within me anymore that calls for it. I’m purely shadow now and—”

            “And maybe just a drop would get you light-drunk?” Sandy laughs and reaches out for Pitch’s hand. “I’d like to find out, Pitch. I want to play. We’re different now, but we’re as we should be. I want to see what you dare with sunlight in your veins. I want…” He traces the lines in Pitch’s palm with his thumbnail. “I want to find out what shadow tastes like.”

            “I swear you will,” Pitch breathes. “You will taste it for its sweetness, not worrying about what it means.”

            “It’ll mean something whether you name it or not,” Sandy says. “But perhaps it doesn’t need to be said.”

            Pitch smiles at him softly, as he continues to play with his hand. He presses cut to cut, having to twist and turn his hand this way and that, for their cuts are not symmetrical. He does this so gently Pitch feels no pain, only the warmth of his hands and the few odd moments when their scabs pull on each other.

            “You could make sun-salve with some of the light, couldn’t you?” Pitch asks after a time.

            Sandy lets Pitch’s hand go and rests his within it. “I could. But I will not erase what has been written. I would not…I would not make it even if you told me now that you could only love me as I was, unscarred.”

            “Sandy! How can you say such a thing! It has ever been within me to love you _as you are_ ; I could not have loved a figment of my imagination for centuries, I—”

            “Pitch.” Sandy catches his eyes. “I know. Perhaps I should have just said, _I will not make sun-salve for myself for these cuts_ , and made it simpler. I shouldn’t have edged into poetry. But I did want to say, also…if you want sun-salve, I would make some for you. I think it could help you now.”

            “Certainly not,” Pitch says. “Shadow adept or no, I feel the same about scars as I ever have.” He smirks. “It’s a little strange, isn’t it, that sun-salve should have been so common? After all, it erases the truth of something that happened.”

            “I learned that it works by showing the body how to repair itself perfectly,” Sandy says. “And it always made enough sense for the working to succeed for me.” He drinks from his glass of light again. "You know, the way you think of that kind of healing, it sounds like there could be shadow-salve as well."

            Pitch's eyes widen for a moment before his face settles into weariness. "You're right," he says. "But no shadow adept I knew ever made anything like that. But I'm not surprised. I haven't talked much about being a shadow adept among shadow adepts, Sandy, but it was...we were proud, but we had all grown up thinking people with our talents were bad. A simple word, childhood word that couldn't be unheard. We knew we could hurt and we knew light adepts healed everyone who wasn't us. It seemed obvious that our powers wouldn't heal.

            "When we argued for the equality of shadow to light, we were arguing to convince ourselves. Never to win over outsiders. It would have been too dangerous to have those conversations."

            "I'm sorry," Sandy says.

            "Well." Pitch raises his eyes to Sandy. "I believe you when you say you never want it to be like that again." He looks out the glass doors, watching the sky turn rose above the rooftops. "There was so much that was wrong, Sandy. When we gathered shadow, we often found it made it easier if we added a few gestures to our words, but we never discussed this formally. We all knew how light adepts did magic, and it wasn't this way. Now, I think those movements were probably the last remnants of dances that we lost with the songs of the light adepts."

            "I don't know what songs will help you dance for shadow," Sandy says, "but I'll be glad to try and find out. A few moments of silence pass, which Sandy breaks with laughter.

            "What is it?"

            Sandy brushes his fingers along the insides of Pitch's wrists. "I was just wondering what other kind of dancing might have power for shadow adepts," he says.

            "Oh?" says Pitch, catching Sandy's wrists in his fingers. "In that case, I wonder in what other situations your voice will have power."

            "Well, I doubt when I find out I'll be able to remember the origin tones."

            "How are you feeling after the sunlight?" Pitch asks quietly, as Sandy gazes at the places where Pitch's grey skin meets his golden.

            “A lot better,” Sandy says, and sighs when he hears Pitch hold his breath. “But not quite as well as could be hoped. We’re going to face a crowd and a king tomorrow. I’m going to need to conserve all my strength. When I’m done with the afternoon light I gathered, I’m going to collect the sunset. Then, later, the moonlight. I want to go to bed with you, but more immediately I need to prepare for the Supplication Day.”

            “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Pitch says, and Sandy makes a face at him.

            “I should pull my hands away,” he says, making no move to do so. “Don’t be like that. The Supplication Day is the last obstacle. Afterwards, we can seclude ourselves for so long we become entirely unacquainted with anything going on in the world at all, if you want.”

            “I do,” says Pitch.

            Sandy smiles at the simple selfishness. “The truth is, Pitch,” he admits, “that I also think I need a little more time to heal. To survive a total loss of the light within me…well, you’ve felt that.”

            “But the light was immediately replaced by shadow.” Pitch’s mind flies back to that dark cavern. “If it had not been…well, I believe you are recovering much faster than I would have.”         Sandy nods. "Anyway, I just want you to know that I don't really want to be patient anymore either."

            Pitch smiles. "Honestly we're probably putting off making fools of ourselves. I could go into raptures about just holding your hand."

            "Me too. And since I don't have to have the resolve I once did...I suppose we ought to be thanking North for insisting on staying here with Jack tonight."

            "I'll leave that propriety up to you," Pitch says. "I still can’t approve of it wholeheartedly. I’m only tolerating you tolerating North because I hope to have you soon glowingly naked in my arms."

 

***

 

            The city still shines as Pitch, Sandy, North, and Jack walk to the palace early the next morning. As they draw nearer, the crowds grow denser, and Sandy, who had led them out of the square, falls back into the group, taking Pitch's hand. "Why'd you wear gloves today?" he asks.

            "Because I have them," Pitch says with a yawn. "And it's cold."

            "It's not that cold. Answer me in Shining if you don't want anyone to overhear."

            Pitch shoots him a pained look. " _Sandy. It's going to be very vexing to me if you insist on my speaking the plain truth at any moment of your choosing. So. I think that even in the general revelation and confusion, it would be better for you if we appeared to be recent allies, rather than lovers since a time even before all my legendary ill deeds. I think it would make most people, even knowing what they do now, very uneasy to see your skin against mine. And I knew you would be likely to reach for me or I to reach for you at some point, hence the gloves._ "

            Sandy sighs, drops his hand, and folds his own within his sleeves. "You're probably right," he says. "But I'm not going to keep you—our past—secret forever."

            Pitch shakes his head. "But _for now_ let them believe that you redeemed and changed me during this whole business. It will make a splendid tale, to hear how bitterest hate changed to the purest love with the true conviction of light behind it...why are you making that face?"

            "It just rings so false. Are we both to have hated each other? It seems rather dangerous to change from hate to love so quickly. Are we to have figured out we loved each other before or after the sacrifice?"

            Pitch shrugs. "Someone will work out the details. The point is, Sandy, that it will make more sense to everyone than us having loved each other for so long." He smirks. "Constancy, in this case, will ring false. Anyway, do you really want to tell everyone another thing they've been wrong about through their whole lives? It won't be a pleasant revelation, as the fault can't be placed on strange and ancient magic, only their own prejudices."

            Sandy frowns. “Well, I won’t lie about it if anyone asks.”

            “They won’t,” Pitch says, “as long as we give them enough else to think about. You still haven’t told me exactly what you’re going to say. You’re not trusting to last-minute inspiration, are you?”

            “Certainly not. It would all come out in Shining, then, and that wouldn’t be any help at all. But I want to put a little power into my words, and so it’s best that the first revelation of them is to the people I want to really hear them.” They take a few more steps without speaking. “Pitch, will you promise to back me up in what I say?”

            “Of course,” Pitch says smoothly, and Sandy laughs.

            “Good,” he says, “because that’s rather frightening, even to me.”

            Pitch smiles down at him before glancing around at the crowd. Though Sandy seems to feel as though the people are pressing too close, Pitch recognizes the distance they’re keeping and the way they’re whispering to their companions upon seeing, not him alone, but them together. He’s pleased to see that it’s an even farther distance than was kept from him when he entered the city alone. “So you don’t want me to be tame,” he says, “a good shadow adept, humbly rejoining light for the betterment of the kingdom?”

            Sandy gives him a pained look, but he doesn’t ask, How could you think that? For Sandy had thought about presenting Pitch that way, if only for a moment. The thought had stemmed from the same place that had whispered to him to keep Pitch, no matter the cost, again and again.

            The thought this time had been easy to fight when it had woken him in the night, as he had to but lean forward a matter of inches to softly kiss Pitch’s lips and remind himself that he had him as he was.

            “You are a good shadow adept,” Sandy answers, “but no one in this kingdom knows what that is. So I want you to be the Nightmare King. And I don’t care to have anyone thinking that we opened the moonpools for the sake of the kingdom. We did it for the sake of the land currently mostly governed by the Lunar King.”

            “I’m glad you told me that before we arrived,” Pitch says. “Sandy, I—I would never wish to restrain you, but for the sake of certain practical matters—the house, the supply boats to the island, a new academy—I do have to recommend a certain amount of tact that you seem to be aiming away from in your plan.”

            “I—oh, very well. But we’ll have to stop this conversation, then, because I need time to think.”

            Pitch simply nods deeply to Sandy.

 

            Once the gates to the law quarter of the palace complex come into view, the movement of the crowd slows to a crawl. Harried-looking palace officials make their way slowly through the huge group, carrying heavy notebooks and stopping to speak with every new party they encounter. “They’re not sending people away, are they?” Sandy asks, after noticing a group of five turn and begin to fight against the flow of people after the official notes something down in his book.

            “It is not that,” North says. “I overheard the questions. These officials are asking everyone what they are bringing before the king and council. Then they can figure out what category the supplication goes into. I have been to a few supplication days before, and categories were always addressed in the same order. I think they must be doing the same thing today, and the group that left was in one of the later categories, like agriculture. So they left because they did not want to stand in the street waiting.”

            Sandy nods, then cranes his neck to look for the nearest official. “Well, the sooner we find out whether we’re in the first category or we’re going to be breaking the rules as we walk in, the better.”

 

            As it turned out, the first category, stuttered out by the very young man who had inquired into their business only to find three adepts looking back at him, was “Matters of personal interest to the king and soul of the kingdom”.

            “I think this should be good for you,” Jack says quietly to Sandy as the official guides them nervously through the crowd and up to the gate. “From the newspapers, I think the other people who’re claiming they’re in this category are going to be the ones you want to hear you, other than the king and council.”

            Sandy nods distractedly. What had the newspapers been saying? Oh well, it was too late for that now. They pass through the recently very elegant and modern accordion gate, the shining stainless steel now soot-covered except for the bottom two feet. All the people they walk past stare at them, and while Sandy knows he was correct to refuse the offer of entering by a small postern, all the eyes are disconcerting. The task before him seems to rely far too heavily on powers that aren’t exactly light. He’s not really a performer, after all, and—

            “Remember, none of them are going to be as shrewd as Master Solana,” Pitch whispers.

            Oh yes. Of course. Sandy smiles gratefully and calls some of his recently regained reserves of light to his skin.

 

            "Ready?" Pitch asks quietly as they approach the thirty-foot doors that open on to the supplication hall. His voice can barely be heard above the din of those inside.

            "I think I must be," Sandy says. "Otherwise the rest of this crowd wouldn't be nearly so quiet." He smiles at Pitch. "I just really wish I had had more of a choice in what I was going to wear."

            Pitch looks Sandy up and down. His clothes are the plain, practical ones from the island, decades out of fashion, and, though carefully mended, mended all the same. But, in addition to this, a subtle soft glow suffuses the visible skin of his hands and face, the same warm light that shines brighter from his eyes and shimmers and sparks through his curls.

            "I do think even the court will manage not to notice," he says. "In twenty years I'll bully all the painters into depicting you in full ceremonial adept robes from the last years before the dimming."

            "Well if you're going to throw historical accuracy out the window, why not have me in elaborate funeral robes?"

            "Good choice," Pitch says with a grin. "Very symbolically shocking, but also appropriate, and given the trend for dull colors these days, the sunset red would stand out very nicely in the compositon."

            "Excuse me, please," interrupts the nervous official, "you're about to be admitted into the hall."

            "Ah, yes, thank you for the warning," Pitch says, with a casual cordiality that doesn't match, as he very well knows, the squaring of his shoulders and the sudden appearance of a slowly-shifting, just-visible aura of darkness around his person.

            Sandy reaches back to give Jack's hand a comforting squeeze. "Are you prepared to speak on your own behalf when it's time?"

            Jack takes a deep breath. "I think so," says Jack. "All I have to say is the truth, right?"

            Sandy squeezes his hand again before letting it go and turning to the tall, tall doors.

            The palace pages look curiously at the group as they pull open the doors and flood the hall with heat and noise. Someone yells louder, though just as indistinguishably as the others, and one of the pages waves for their attention. "That was you being announced," she says. "Please hurry on in; we’re not supposed to keep these things open for long.”

            The hall itself isn't exactly chaotic. Yes, it currently holds three times as many people as it's meant to, yes, perhaps only one in twenty people now present have ever even seen a supplication day before, and yes, there'd be no way to tell that the outside air was crisp and cool and that the city had flowed with cleansing water too long ago, but no matter how smelly and loud the crowd, each person seemed to have a very clear idea of what they were doing.

            "Where's the king?" Sandy asks as they make their way through the center of the room on a gold carpet much the worse for wear, held clear only by the efforts of guards holding back the other waiting supplicants.

            Pitch shoots him an unreadable look as the crowd around them quiets, as they are recognized, perhaps as adepts, perhaps as Nightmare King and Dreamweaver, perhaps as something else entirely, but recognized all the same. Wiser than to speak, Pitch calls Sandy's gaze to follow his to the end of the hall, where several men sit upon a dais.

            Fifteen years. Before this day, it had been fifteen years since Sandy stood before the king. As he and Pitch, Jack and North approach, Sandy discovers he can see every one of those years in the king's--no, Apolyon's--face and bearing. And he finds he couldn't care less. So the king is an ordinary man, aging as ordinary men do. It doesn't excuse the laws he passed, and it doesn't excuse how he used Jack. And if the king looks so human next to Pitch and next to him, as they stand young-looking, wounded, eerily flickering with light and shadow before him, so be it. Sandy no longer wishes to look safe. He no longer wishes to even pretend to the idea that he aspires to hold his power with the king. The king is nothing made into too much, and has nothing to do with Light or Shadow, adepts, or the Seleneans that drink from the moonpools.

            He squares his shoulders and marches forward, leaving Pitch to mutter an Erebusian curse and thank his long legs for allowing him to not have to run after Sandy to catch up.

            "Your highness Apolyon," Sandy says, touching the Selenean words with power so that the whole hall hears him. He doesn't bow, and as he stands still, his former working becomes unnecessary as the crowd falls silent. So. How does one force one’s will upon nothing? Fill the nothing with the something of oneself. "I have come here, on this Supplication Day wisely and justly opened to all Seleneans who were able to travel here in time, not to ask you anything, but to thank you, and to bring you news that will surely comfort you in this time of great change."

            He pauses, and the king opens his mouth, then closes it abruptly. He turns to the man standing beside him, the Speechgate, and says something, and the man turns a disk on a tall pole so that the side painted a glossy blue, rather than glossy red, is visible to the crowd.

            Sandy knows well enough that it means he has permission to speak, but he wonders if the king knows that it's good for himself that he appeared to give Sandy the right he already has, for Sandy would have continued speaking anyway. He also wonders if the king's ever thought about how the royal permission to speak and the royal pardon from death are represented the same way. But such wondering isn't why he's here.

            He smiles serenely, and goes on. "First, my thanks. For the whole of your reign you have been diligently, publicly concerned with efforts, even extreme efforts, to try to rekindle magic in the Lunar Kingdom. And you did this all without troubling me with ten thousand sand grains of questions about your methods, thus leaving me in peace to weave dreams from my island, informing me only of the most momentous news. What more could I have asked for from the Lunar King? And all this continued even as I wove what dreams I thought best. Truly, the king has been kind, and generous, and merciful in his behavior toward me, but, of course I should expect nothing else, for how else is he meant to develop his legacy as such without acting in this way?"

            He looks to the counselors in their tiered seating to either side of the king, then around to the crowd behind him. "Truly, what else could he have done?"

            Sparks of light flicker along the cuts on his face, and the king's hand twitches toward the Speechgate, but returns to the arm of his throne without catching his attention. Pitch, of all the hall, notices this—all others now watch Sandy.

            Pitch meets the king's eyes, and though he does not do something so obvious as smile, he looks at the king with the expression of an expert watching a novice's obnoxious bravado fall to ruin. The king had tried to play with secrets and concealed knowledge without understanding what he concealed. He hadn't understood what he was trying to hold, and so now, as it escapes, he can do nothing but sit and watch. If he turns the speaking disc to try to stop Sandy, he’ll be signaling to everyone that he thinks Sandy ought to be silent, but why would he want that? After all, Sandy has only said complimentary things so far. He’s only said the truth as the king has told all his subjects. The king cannot try to stop him without admitting to the whole hall of counselors and petitioners that his actions in relation to the kingdom’s magic, which they all felt so strongly on the day of the equinox, were motivated by something other than the benevolence he always claimed.

            As soon as Sandy spoke, it became as impossible for the king to hold him back as to stop the sunrise. If the king’s motives hadn’t been so petty and insular, Pitch could well join him in some fellow-feeling now. As it is, he only feels a swell of pride as Sandy continues on, forcing the king’s falsehoods to solidify into truths in this public arena.

            Is it a light adept trick Pitch never mastered, making truth out of lies without changing their content? Or is it a Sandy trick, the trick of a light adept who has decided that revelation, the watchword of his powers, need not limit them? Or is it just Sandy, adept and more than adept, who will never be kept from his purpose once he finds it?

            “And so, having thanked you, I also wish to free you of some of the burdens you took on during those trying years,” Sandy continues, and Pitch abandons his reverie to listen. “As you have said, you placed heavy restrictions on the practice of earth magic and other magics in the Lunar kingdom, out of concern that the presence of foreign magic might be suppressing our own.

            “Now, of course, you and everyone else in this hall and in this city know that this was not the case. The blockage of the water from the moonpools blocked the magic of this land, not foreign interference. Thus, now the Lunar Kingdom may freely welcome earth adepts and all Verdans once again, as well as all other visitors, adept or no. What a comfort it will be to you to be able to allot the money and effort that went towards the monitoring of earth adepts and their removal to the restoration of the moonpools for the open use of the public, improving the Lunar Kingdom’s relationship with Verd and aiding the recovery of this land’s magic, as you so dearly wish.”

            Sandy pauses, and meets the king’s gaze impassively. No trace of dismay shows on his face, and the pounding of Sandy’s heart begins to calm. Whatever else may be going on in the king’s mind right now, he’s too canny to contradict Sandy in front of the current crowd. Perhaps he’s also canny enough to realize that Sandy’s offered him a way to gain the approval of the people and to wield the influence that he had held before thanks to his control over access to Jack. Perhaps he’s canny enough to realize that despite his earlier efforts, magic is back now, and cannot be suppressed again. But no, that was not this king, was it? This king feared magic but wanted to use it as a tool for his own power, and he had taken the histories of the Dimming…but had that been him?

            Sandy gives himself a mental shake. The real motives didn’t matter. How this king really felt about magic didn’t matter. The propaganda was clearer, and so Sandy would make it true.

            Sandy reaches down and deliberately rolls up his sleeves.  He spreads his arms wide as he makes his next speech to the king and crowd, showing the wound of his sacrifice to all. “Your majesty,” he begins, “I have but little more to say. First, I wish to present Pitch Black to you, whom you have known throughout your life as the Nightmare King. It was only through the equal part he played in the events of the equinox that the moonpools were opened and both their water and the knowledge of this land’s true magic were able to flow through the city. Now that all know that shadow and light are the right of Seleneans, both he and I will work to protect this unified magic by whatever means necessary.”

            Pitch nods slowly, unable to stop his lips from twitching upwards as he hears the crowd break out into murmurings for the first time since Sandy began to speak.

            “I trust you will work with us in a manner befitting the rightful ruler and guardian of this land.”

            Sandy pauses, and the king stands, but does not step away from his throne. “Your words have been heard,” he says.

            “Thank you, but you have not yet heard them all,” Sandy replies before the Speechgate can turn his staff. Good. That was rude, but not a definitive breach of the rules of order. “I must commend several others to you before I go. First, I commend Library Director Toothiana, whose extensive knowledge of her library allowed her to save a great many important books pertaining to the history of the light adepts from the equinox flood. These books,” he says to the counselors and crowd, “had been kept in the Dream Cloisters in the palace for safekeeping. Pitch Black and I were unable to save them from the flood when we opened the moonpool there, but Toothiana was, even at the risk of revealing herself as a fire adept. She should be commended for her bravery, and, due to her clear dedication to preserving the archives of the Lunar Kingdom, ought to be invited to retain her position as Director of the Great Library, despite the irregularities with which the flood forced her to perform her duties.

            “Next, I must commend Nicholas St. North to you. Your majesty has already lauded his brilliance and selflessness in inventing machines to allow the Lunar Kingdom to continue to prosper despite the privations of workers that followed your noble attempts to reawaken this land’s magic. Knowing this was your true goal, he aided Pitch and me when confusion and the lack of the knowledge that would come with the equinox put the plan that would attain your dearest wish at risk from your own guards. The depth of his loyalty to the kingdom is unquestionable, and he should be handsomely rewarded.

            “Finally,” Sandy says, raising his voice ever so slightly, “I must commend Jack Frost to you. Jack Frost, who risked leaving his safe apartments in the palace to seek out the only other two adepts he knew were anywhere near him, to try to learn more about his own magic and make himself more than a frightened and ignorant boy, but a true adept of this kingdom. Jack Frost, who, after a series of most alarming circumstances, found the power within himself to aid in the opening of the moonpools, and to aid in healing a city, a kingdom, a land, and a people.” Sandy lowers his voice to its previous volume, giving the impression that he speaks solely to the king, but the whole hall yet hears him easily.

            “Perhaps, your majesty, you are surprised to hear that such a feat was performed by one so young,” he says. “However, Jack is not so young as the bewilderment of his mind caused by the awakening of his powers led all to assume. At Jack's request, as the first part of some small reward I could make to him for his great aid, I let the power of Light fill my mind as I attempted to speak a few simple sentences in Shining, the language in which none can lie. The simple sentences I tried to speak? Merely statements of Jack's age. The only one I was able to speak, the only one that was true, was this: Jack is eighteen years old."

            Pitch inhales sharply, struggling to show no other reaction. Sandy had done no such thing. And surely the king still possesses Jack's records, as part of his ill-gotten gains from the library. It's folly bordering on madness to lie before the king and counsel this way. They would know! Sandy would ruin his truthful reputation and the reputation of all light adepts to come, and for no gain!

            And yet...and yet no triumph appears in the king's face, no sign that anything is amiss in what Sandy has said.

            "Your words have been heard," the king says, and turns to Jack. "What does this news mean for you, Jack Frost?"

            Jack steps around from behind Pitch, and Sandy tugs on his sleeve until he's standing with Sandy and Pitch framing him equally. "Since I..." Pitch, barely able to hear him, pokes him in the back sharply. Aware of the gravity of the situation, Jack turns his startled yelp into a clearing of his throat, and begins again. "Since I know myself to be of the age of majority, I can no longer impose my care and keeping on the people of the Lunar Kingdom. Master Sandren and Master Pitch Black have taught me how to govern my powers so that I no longer pose any danger to Seleneans. I will make my way independently in the world now."

            "Surely you are not insensible to the advantages that royal protection has given you these past several months," the king says.

            "I am not insensible to anything that occurred since my powers appeared," Jack replies, and the king raises his eyebrows slightly.

            "This, I suppose, is naught but what I would expect from a young man of your training. Very well. Your words have been heard. You will make your own way in the world now, governed by all the laws that govern all Seleneans."

            Jack bows and steps back, and the king turns again to Sandy. "Dreamweaver, is there anything else you would say before this counsel and all these waiting petitioners?"

            Sandy stands up a little straighter. "What must be known by all has already been made known. Light and shadow both are the true magic of this kingdom, and the moonpools are our source. As the right of all Seleneans, they shall never be closed again, neither by will nor by accident, as I'm sure you'll agree they were closed before. As I leave, your majesty, my only petition is that you rejoice, that circumstances should have allowed the opening of the moonpools in your reign. With governance and care from the palace to aid me and Pitch Black as we work to restore light and shadow magic to what they always should have been, your name will go down in history as the benevolent ruler who healed a great breach in this land, as a king who, by helping the very soul of the land, proved himself beyond a doubt the rightful revealed ruler."

            "Your words have been heard," the king says. "They have indeed been heard with all the clarity a light adept could impart to the common tongue. I shall rejoice that you came to say these things today, before the counsel and petitioners. Go now, and may the light of right judgement shine upon you always."

            The Speechgate, now on solid ground, turns the panel from blue to red. Sandy inclines his head in a manner not clearly a bow, while the others with him make much clearer signs of respect. They turn, and Sandy leads them back down the center of the hall--as he has not asked the king for anything specific, he need not stay for the enaction of the results, like most petitioners. He swings his arms more than he usually would when he walks, not theatrically so, but enough so that the wound on his arm is presented again and again to the sight of the crowd.

            Pitch catches his eye as they walk out, and Sandy's sure that if he didn't want to avoid giving everyone watching them something else to talk about, he'd be whispering furiously to Sandy right now. Sandy only smiles slightly, and, when they're ten feet or so from the entrance, reaches out and takes Pitch's hand. Pitch startles, but doesn't pull away, and as they step out into the sun together, Sandy doesn't prevent his smile from growing full and unguarded.

 

***

 

            "I can't believe you!" Pitch exclaims as soon as they've moved away from the crowd and onto a side street. "I cannot believe you! You"--he lowers his voice to a whisper--"lied to the king's face, in front of the whole council, and you gave him enough room in your statements to claim you as an ally and a royalist supporter!"

            "Yes, and that's why he's never going to find out that I lied to him," Sandy says, as if it should be obvious.

            Pitch shakes his head, and North nods sagely.

            "Wait, what?" Jack asks, drawing back from his place ahead of the others.

            “I don’t actually know your real age, Jack,” Sandy says. “Using Shining for something so specific like that isn’t easy, and anyway, it wasn’t necessary.”

            “Why not?” asks Jack.

            “I’d like to know the same thing,” Pitch says. “We knew that the king—well, _a_ king, anyway, had taken the books on the history of the Dimming from the library, and Jack’s name being gone from the records was what started all this. If anyone has Jack’s records, it’s the king.”

            “But no one does,” Sandy says. He turns to speak directly to Jack. “Jack, this may not be pleasant news to hear, but I think that your records never existed at all.”

            They all walk a little way in silence, Jack’s gaze fallen to the cobblestones. “Go on,” he says, finally.

            “I had a conversation with North yesterday,” Sandy says, “and he explained to me that in the time since you were found with your powers, no one stepped forward to claim you. Of course, that doesn’t prove anything on its own. Your powers and your new place at the palace could have frightened away many people, though I—I think that making sure you knew who your family were and where you came from would have been worth the risk for anyone who knew you.” Jack raises his head a little, and Sandy goes on. “But there’s more than this. When you recognized the bottle of Lifeblood River water, the things you said made it clear that you had been wandering through the tunnels underneath the city for some time.” Sandy softens his voice. “This isn’t something that would happen to someone with somewhere to go. I think you were an orphan, Jack. How recently, I don’t know. And I also think that wherever you came from, there wasn’t a lot for you there.”

            Jack remains silent, but Pitch doesn’t. “Even an orphan has records,” he objects. “Even an orphan has a community.”

            “Are you so sure?” Sandy gives Pitch a small smile. “it probably doesn’t surprise you to know that I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, but I’ve also been thinking about the Nightmare War and what led up to it, the shadow adepts, and, well, the shadows in the city.” He folds his hands in front of him. “This land has never been very good at facing…anything…that wasn’t quite one thing or the other, or that was unexpected from how it was always understood. In the case of the shadow adepts, that meant native magic workers who could do harm. In your case, that meant a shadow adept with light in his eyes, who had once worked with light. With the Nightmare War, it meant everything that Magnes and his people revealed. Thousands upon thousands of things, forcing everyone to admit that they do not take everything in their lives out under the Summer Solstice, and making them forget, in shame, that the Solstice has a night, too. As for Jack…his magic has always been in him. Magic that drew others towards him in a magicless land, and made them uneasy with how it was not _quite_ the magic they were looking for, though of course that would have been impossible for anyone to explain.”

            “Interesting, but it doesn’t answer my objections,” Pitch says.

            “Jack’s a water adept,” Sandy continues. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ability arose earlier in his family, but was suppressed by lack of access to Lifeblood River water. Jack wouldn’t have been the first one to make people uneasy. And whatever happened with his Meray ancestor, I doubt any of the Seleneans around were happy about it. Jack’s just the last in a long line of people who were neither wholly one thing nor another. And I think…without shadow adepts, it would have been difficult for Jack to find a community.”

            “How?” Pitch asks.

            “Even when shadow adepts were hated,” Sandy says, “they were always there. The shadows were filled, and there was magic in them, even if that magic was feared. There was no escaping the fact that the world had a periphery, because that periphery was inhabited. Without shadow adepts filling that space, the periphery became less legitimate and the center became even more desirable. But then center is a pure unity, so where could Jack fit, where everyone, even those on the former periphery, have no place to seek but the center?”

            “You’ve lost Jack,” Pitch says, and Sandy blinks and looks over at him just in time to see him start to blush with embarrassment under his puzzled expression. “And I’m not sure I like your answer very well either. Wasn’t the revelation you provided on the equinox meant to make sure shadow adepts were never relegated to the periphery ever again? But now it sounds like it’s very important that some sort of magic exist on the periphery.”

            “Well, the problem as I see it was that adepts ever participated in the center and periphery system at all,” says Sandy. “That’s for kings and whoever they can convince. As of now, I plan to utterly disregard it unless it serves some practical purpose.”

            “And to think _I’m_ the one always vexing the king in the starstories,” Pitch murmurs.

            “I’m still not sure I follow all that,” Jack says.

            “Don’t worry about it now,” Sandy says, waving his hand. “What I really should have said was that I would stake a great deal on the record-keeping of the Lunar Kingdom not being as perfect as it’s intended to be. Since no one claimed to be related to you and there was a point where clearly you thought wandering through the tunnels under the city was a good idea, I’m almost certain that wherever you came from, you weren’t officially documented there.”

            "This is still just speculation," Pitch objects.

            "Jack, what do you have to say?" Sandy asks.

            "Why did the king make such a big deal about the missing records, anyway, then?" Jack shoves his hands in his pockets and looks around at the golden limestone buildings lining the street, as if he'll find answers instead of addresses on the doors.

            "Well, what was the result?" North asks.

            "Oh." Jack turns to Pitch. "It was the warrant for your arrest."

            Pitch nods.

            "I guess that makes sense," Jack says, looking back at the ground. "The king wouldn't have really wanted to find people with a better claim on me than him. But having Pitch in the library would make him want to be there too, and my records were as good a reason as any. And when no one could find the records, there was a way to use them being missing, to blame the other missing books on Pitch. So Pitch could be arrested, then. Leaving me the only source of magic in the city again."

            "It would explain why Apolyon never mentioned Pitch in his letters," Sandy says. "He didn't want me to come to the city. It would have worked, too, if Pitch and I had really been enemies."

            "But aside from just the records..." Jack's shoulders sag. "I don't know how to feel. I wish I had my memories back, but without them, I can't miss a family that maybe I never had. If I met them now, they'd be strangers to me." He smiles for the briefest instant, then says very quietly, "You all have treated me more like family, and more like a person, than anyone I can remember."

            "North most of all, of course," Pitch says, to which Jack looks up, startled, and which brings an exasperated smile to Sandy's face. "What? I'm merely stating what must be true."

            North shrugs. "Perhaps it is true now. I am honored to hear that Jack thinks of me as family, and I will be glad to take that role for you, Jack. But you must realize, Pitch, that you and Sandy are family, too, now."

            "Why?" asks Pitch, looking rather uncomfortable. "Is it because you took care of us after the Equinox? I'm sure that we'll be glad to repay you in whatever way we can--"

            "Pitch." Sandy takes his hand. "It's not about repayment. The equinox connected us--us, and Toothiana, and Seraphina and Aster. Not magically--I don't think--but because we were the ones closest to it. When one of us needs to understand something, where will we go but to one of the others?"

            Pitch doesn't look convinced. "Maybe so," he says, and then, lowering his voice, "but I'd really rather have you all to myself for a while right now."

            Sandy laughs, color rising to his face. Pitch is so entranced by Sandy doing so, in public, because of him, with no attempt at concealment, that North's hearty clap on the back comes as a complete surprise.

            "In that case, my friend, Jack and I will be off as soon as we retrieve the autocarriage. I think we all have enough to keep us busy for a while, yes? Though I bet you and Sandy will have more fun with your time!"

 

***

 

            As soon as North and Jack are gone--North with a wink and Jack with a somewhat uncomfortable wave--Sandy hurries back into the entrance hall, with Pitch close behind him. When he passes the stairs, however, Pitch strides around him to stop him, hands on his shoulders. "What, praytell, do you think you're doing?" he asks.

            "I want to try something," Sandy says.

            Pitch blinks. "I daresay we both want to try a great many things," he says, squeezing Sandy's shoulders.

            Sandy laughs and bends his head to kiss Pitch's hand. This alerts Pitch to their unnecessary and thus totally unacceptable gloved state, and he lets go of Sandy to tug off his gloves with less grace than he would have cared to display if anyone but Sandy was around.

            Then again, Sandy isn't even watching, as he slips away from Pitch, through the kitchen, and out onto the light-gathering circle.

            "Sandy!" Pitch calls plaintively, "where are you going?"

            "I have an idea!" Sandy calls back. "Now go fill up as many bottles as you can with moonpool water. If it works, we'll need them!"

            "My idea is called 'jumping you in the kitchen if you won't come upstairs to bed'," Pitch says, leaning out the back door. He's quite red with his own boldness, and Sandy's soft smile doesn't help.

            "Oh, you will," Sandy says. "But not, I think this kitchen. Get the moonpool water. I think you're going to like this."

            Pitch manages to hold onto most--most--of the bottles of moonpool water when he returns and sees what Sandy's done. Above the brick of the gathering circle, a golden disk of light--the late-morning sunlight--shines and shimmers. Pitch squints at it, but finds he doesn't need to turn his face away, though it's just as brilliant as the dreamglass without glass from the eve of the equinox.

            The longer he looks, the more he can distinguish that the light isn't one uniform color and brightness. If he doesn't try to focus too hard, he can almost see the shape of a house in the disk, but he can't bring himself to affirm that that's what he's really seeing. If there is a house in the disk--well, it must be because the light is transparent, mustn't it? But the shape of the house doesn't look like the ones across the yard and wall.

            "Sandy," he asks, slowly picking up the bottle he dropped into a flowerbed, "what did you do?"

            Sandy's eyes gleam almost as bright as the disk of light when he turns to Pitch. "I asked Light to show me the fastest way back to the Isle of Dreams."

            Pitch gulps back a cry of "that's impossible!" The time for saying that was clearly past. "You are aware that no one's ever done something like that before, aren't you?"

            "Yes!" Sandy says with a grin. "But there's no reason for it not to be possible, right?"

            "I..." Pitch can only stare at the disk of light, and Sandy's grin fades as he sees how utterly taken aback Pitch is.

            "This is more than gathering starlight." Sandy says, almost like a question. "This is more than the equinox, even. Both those things weren't so different from others that had been done before." He reaches a hand up to the disk of light and gently touches the surface. Slow ripples spread from his fingertips, and beads of light race along the cuts on his hands and face again. "I shouldn't have been able to do this," he muses. "I couldn't have done it before the equinox, and I shouldn't have been strong enough to do it now. But it seemed so clear...that this was what the patterns were for, to let us know how to do things like this...we always used them for things having to do with time, so why not space..."

            Pitch steps onto the brick of the gathering circle, approaching Sandy slowly. "Do you...do you still feel like yourself?"

            "I do," says Sandy. "I feel less in danger of not being myself than I have since the equinox."

            Both fall silent for several long moments. “So, we’re different now,” Pitch finally says. “I have no idea what I would do that would be the parallel to this, though.” He gives Sandy a small smile. “It’s probably for the best that we’re going to the island after all.”

            “So you will follow me through it?” Sandy asks, looking to the disk once again. “If we are different…there might not be anything stopping it from being dangerous.”

            “I’ve never grown accustomed to guarantees of safety,” Pitch says. “Not even with you.”

            Sandy looks at him, stricken. “But I never did anything….”

            “Sandy, all I’m trying to say is this: I know there might be danger for me in some of the things you do. But I don’t demand that there _not_ be. I trust you, and I trust myself.”

            “This has all gotten very serious,” Sandy murmurs.  “Do you still—”

            “Sandy,” Pitch says, nodding to his armful of bottles and the disk of light, “I’m going to follow you through that portal to the island. And when we get there, if you try to show me the guest room again, I’m going to absolutely _drag_ you in there after me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sandy isn't really a royalist--his views were clear enough all the way back in chapter 1. But it suited his purposes to (mostly) act like one in this case. I don't give the monarchy long in the Lunar Kingdom, though. Apolyon had closer to absolute rule than many of his immediate ancestors, and the counselors from anywhere NOT the City of the Moon didn't like that at all. Now they have more leverage because Apolyon has no personal adept and no way to control magic without giving the counsel a good reason to dig up the laws on calling for an immediate succession. And Apolyon still has no heir.
> 
> Ah, anyway, there will be explicit sexual content next chapter, in case you weren't reading this story for the political maneuvering.


	31. Our Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more, it rains on the Isle of Dreams. Sandy and Pitch celebrate their physical reunion more completely than they had the evening before. They walk on the shore, speaking of mysteries, and an end that has not yet been reached.

            The dawn that wakes Sandy is weak and gray, and at once he’s glad that it’s easy for him to say that it wouldn’t be worth getting out of bed to go gather it, though he doesn’t immediately remember why. And then Pitch sighs beside him and Sandy knows he wouldn’t have left to gather the dawn this morning even if it was the purest sunrise the Isle of Dreams had ever seen. He wants to laugh with joy—yesterday and last night had not been illusions, and Pitch is really here, asleep in the bed that had held Sandy alone for as long as he had had it, that he had thought would hold him alone until he needed a new one—which would also hold only him. “Pitch,” Sandy whispers, because he can. He scoots closer to him, rearranging the blankets into a cozier pocket around them both, and chuckles very quietly at a few aches the movement brings forth. He’d expect nothing less after a day in bed with Pitch, and despite any soreness, he’d love an excuse to spend all this day in bed with him, too.

            Most obligingly, the grayness of the dawn explains itself then as the quiet rush of steady rain grows to fill the room. Sandy smiles, pulls the covers up around their necks and presses himself along Pitch’s side, skin to skin from shoulders to toes. So much skin. Sandy’s toes brush against the top of Pitch’s shin while he nuzzles his neck to quiet the giggle that such a close comparison of their heights calls from him. “My lover is long like sunset shadows…” he murmurs. He kisses along a cut on Pitch’s jaw, resting his hand on Pitch’s chest to feel his heartbeat beneath his fingers. “My lover… _my lover_ ” He blinks after speaking the words in Shining, then smiles slowly. Why should he not work on an “our bed” morning poem while he waits for Pitch to wake? They will never have been bonded like other light adepts, but he doubts that any pair of adepts have ever been so bonded as they.

            “ _Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, is my lover_ ,” he begins. “ _I call him Pitch, and he rests beside me in our bed./My lover’s hair is black as ink, and writes poems beneath my fingers._ ” Sandy brings his fingers up against Pitch’s scalp behind his ear, but doesn’t run his fingers through Pitch’s hair. It’s far too tangled for that right now.

            _“My lover’s skin is fair like platinum, for to him I am as the only sun./Oh, lover, skin like the moon, for we have been parted long./Oh, lover, if I am your sun, our bed will make you brown as a roof-tiler._ ” Sandy moves his hand from Pitch’s hair and along his jaw, down his neck, and back to his chest. Pitch frowns and presses closer to him, remaining sound asleep. “ _My lover’s lips are like a secret he tells only me_ ,” Sandy says with a smile. “ _My lover’s mouth is like a fruit with a green rind and ripe flesh./The full sweetness only revealed in our bed._ ” He tries to commit this one to memory; he thinks Pitch might like to hear it when he wakes up. Sandy sighs. And how long will _that_ take?

            Sandy kisses his shoulder, poking his tongue between his lips to taste Pitch’s skin. He had never gotten a chance to get familiar with Pitch’s taste before, and he should try now, while he has some time to think. The muscles are hard beneath his lips, and the slight salt taste of the sweat of yesterday’s exertions almost has him shaking Pitch, demanding he wake— _I need you I need you I want you I want you and your body your human body I made you sweat my lover—_ but he only kisses him again and again, kisses that little spot clean, and learns how the skin of the Nightmare King tastes. There’s a very slight, curious sweetness to it, as of unrefined sugar melted over a smoky fire.

            Kozzy never tasted like that. For an instant Sandy feels oddly disloyal—to what, or to whom, he’s not exactly sure—in the love he has for Pitch. He does not want Kozzy back. Kozzy was the boy he fell in love with, so many years ago, but Pitch is the man he kept loving, across all the ages and miles.

            Sandy rubs his thumb along Pitch’s bottom lip. The guilt—it must linger from his childhood, from a world in which no one ever imagined shadow adepts could be generous, true lovers. It must linger from ways of thought he’d never worried about because the only shadow adept was Pitch, who had been a light adept, almost.

            There are no conventions for waking with a shadow lover. "My lover's scars," Sandy begins. This is not conventional, and Sandy hopes it never will be, given all that led to it. "My lover's scars are worthy of praise. My lover's scars are like a map that has led many places. Once I thought my lover's scars were like a map leading me astray. Now I know that my lover's scars are like a map that has led me to our bed." Sandy smiles at himself. It's all a bit melancholy, and isn't the time for that over? Perhaps it's the sound of the rain that draws his thoughts so, as the rush of it continues to increase and the dawn seems to retreat.

            "How angry would you be if I woke you, Pitch?" Sandy murmurs. "Waking you when neither of us needs to leave?" He slides his hand down Pitch's body until his palm rests just above his navel.

            "My lover is long like sunset shadows." He repeats the line that first inspired him to poetry. "My lover is long like sunset shadows, lying in our bed. Like the shadows he grows longer when I, like his sun, settle down beside him in our bed. In our bed my lover waits for me like a dark tower on a plain--"

            Under his hand, Pitch's stomach spasms, and Sandy raises his head confusedly from the pillow near Pitch's ear to find his face contorted with restrained laughter. "You!" And Pitch may be laughing at him, but he's laughing at him into his mouth, so he doesn't mind at all.

            "Was there something you wanted, Sandy?" Pitch asks finally, breathless from the kiss, his voice low and hoarse with sleep. He opens his eyes so that only the barest slivers of abyss-black show. "Remember, I'm still asleep."

            "You seem up to me," Sandy says, and Pitch presses his forehead to Sandy's and laughs. It's a good, low, laugh, one that feels like it might be too quiet to hear if they were any farther apart than they are now. Listening to it feels just as wonderful as Pitch's long-fingered hand stroking up and down Sandy's back, and it occurs to him, as the heat from his hand is broken with one tingling chill after another up and down his spine, that this is how Pitch likes to laugh. That his real laugh only exists in the inches between mouths when foreheads touch, that his most genuine laugh is something only for Sandy.

            It's an absurd idea, to have such a secret laugh, but it seems like something that might fit Pitch, and it seems like something that would fit a shadow adept. He kisses Pitch again because how foolish was he? To think that in bed shadow adepts might not have peculiar silly habits that made their lovers simply have to kiss them at that moment.

            And shouldn't he have noticed that yesterday and last night?

            When Sandy breaks the kiss, Pitch sighs and turns on his side to face him more directly. "I'm--I'm glad to be woken up this way," he says, glancing away, his voice dropping to a whisper. He pauses, and collects himself. "But I thought you'd have gone out to gather the dawn."

            "Listen," Sandy says.

            "Ah," Pitch breathes. He smiles when a low rumble of thunder fills the next silence, and though it's mostly the smile Sandy knows, there's just a hint of unfamiliarity about it, and he tells Pitch so.

            "I suppose this is the smile that Pitch wears when he wakes next to Sandy," Pitch says lightly.

            "I want you to tell me if there's anything to tell," Sandy says.

            Pitch takes his hand from Sandy and moves away so he's just barely not touching him. Sandy can still feel the warmth from his skin and wants to pull him closer, but he's had plenty of practice in understanding that the only way to have Pitch is to first let him go, so he doesn't.

            "Yesterday," Pitch begins, his eyes meeting Sandy's with a nervous intensity, "and last night. You opened a portal across the ocean, and I stepped through it, because I trust you, and I love you even as you have become more a light adept than I ever knew anyone could be. But still, you are a light adept. And still, I am a shadow adept. Was I familiar to you last night, Sandy?" He asks, his face serious.

            "Yes," Sandy answers, and Pitch nods.

            "I should not have been," he says, and takes a deep breath. "I was determined to be Kozzy as I made love to you. It is still...difficult for me to imagine, as a reality, physical love between light adepts and shadow adepts. Anything unfamiliar you see in my smile...no doubt it is simply the smile of Pitch Black, who has never been so intimate with anyone."

            He doesn't ask for anything, and this time, Sandy realizes, this time is when he must hold onto Pitch. The time for letting go is over.

            "I am sorry," Sandy says, taking his hand. "I am sorry for everything that was taught to us and everyone that made you feel like a shadow adept could have no place in a light adept's bed, even after five hundred years. I felt like the choosing the fall equinox said the same thing, but--well, whatever else it was, it wasn't an apology. I'm sorry, Pitch. I'll do everything I can to make sure you never feel that way again."

            When he kisses the knuckles of Pitch's hand, Pitch shivers. A distant lightning flash illuminates the room.

            “Kozzy worshipped you,” Pitch says, his voice low, but not a whisper. He twines his fingers with Sandy’s. “I’m afraid that I want to devour you.”

            “And who is to say that is not worship?” Sandy’s heart races, and he’s never felt so naked before Pitch’s slow smile as now.

            Pitch lets go of his hand and reaches out to pull Sandy close against him, so close neither can breathe in unless the other breathes out. “Whether it is or it isn’t,” Pitch whispers into Sandy’s ear, his hot breath throwing Sandy into such a confusion of eagerness as he’s never felt before, “this is the structure my argument will take.” He kisses Sandy’s earlobe. “If you’ll have me as I truly am now, not trying to be as I was.”

            “Yes,” Sandy gasps. “Yes!”

            Sandy feels Pitch sigh before he takes Sandy’s earlobe between his lips, and it seems so odd that Sandy almost laughs. But before the sound escapes him, the lips are replaced by teeth, and Pitch nips him.

            He makes a shocked little sound, his hands stopping their re-exploration of Pitch’s back, and he feels Pitch’s whole body tense like a bowstring. For a few, silent moments, he takes stock of himself, and then—laughs. “I think you had better be sparing with those kind of kisses, Nightmare King, unless you’re also willing to soon be patient.”

            Pitch relaxes and places a few ordinary kisses at the corner of Sandy’s jaw. “Even so,” he murmurs, and lets go of Sandy to push him onto his back.

            Sandy licks his lips as he looks up at him, hands to either side of his head, knees on either side of his hips. Though the blankets have slid off, he’s still not much more than a shadow in the storm-filtered morning. “I always imagined your eyes glowing in situations like this,” Sandy says.

            “Oh, did you?” Pitch smiles again. “Glowing like you are now?” He raises one hand and cups Sandy’s cheek for an instant before sliding it down to rest on the center of Sandy’s chest.             Sandy would like to protest that he’s only glowing very faintly, hardly much more than moonpool water, when Pitch goes on. “And what else did you imagine, Sandy? How wild did your thoughts grow, when I visited? How busy were your hands, while I slept in the guest room?” He bends down, and his hair falls around Sandy’s face in a messy curtain. His own features grow strange in the very dim light from Sandy’s skin, the brighter lines of his healing cuts, and the shine from his eyes.

            Sandy lifts his face just a little to kiss Pitch lightly on the lips. “I could never do anything while you were here,” he says. “I would have wanted to keep it a secret, and then you would have known.”

            Pitch half-smiles. “Perhaps that was wise. And on second thought I don’t want to talk about those days. But Sandy,” he says, blinking slowly and grinning widely, “promise me you’ll have me in the guest room. Today. Have me begging, have me leave staggering.”

            Sandy brings his hands up and slides them into Pitch’s hair. “I won’t make you beg,” he says. “And you won’t leave staggering—you’ll be asleep.”

            Pitch considers. “I suppose that would be all right,” he says. “As long as you’re asleep beside me.”

            “Of course,” Sandy says, messaging Pitch’s scalp. “You’re not going to make me beg now, are you?”

            “Not a bit.” Pitch bends to catch Sandy’s lower lip firmly enough between his teeth to send delectable shivers all through his body.

            Pitch sits up then, and as soon as he doesn’t have to use his hands for support, he brings them down over Sandy’s shoulders, over his chest—each fingertip taking its turn brushing against his nipples—across the smooth warmth of his round belly, and down to his hips. There, he slows, tracing patterns into the skin with a dazed, dreamy expression. Sandy shivers again as Pitch draws his finger over a spot just along the edge of the lower curve of Sandy’s belly and continues to ignore his now straining cock.

            “You _are_ going to make me beg,” Sandy says.

            “No, I’m just trying to learn all your secrets. I didn’t know to touch you there before, did I?” Before he can answer, Pitch moves back and bends down to kiss and suck at that spot, that silly little spot, so close and yet so far! He scrapes his teeth against it and Sandy shudders and gives out a surprised little moan. He digs his fingers into his own hair and looks up at the broad beams of the ceiling, feeling his face burn with a nonsensical blush. Maybe he could grow to appreciate that spot. After all, Pitch was the only one who would take such care to find it, he hadn’t even known about it himself, it was only Pitch who would decide to use such intimate knowledge and—and his teeth!—at the same time.

            “Pitch,” Sandy says, when Pitch raises his head, looking quite too smug for such an early stage in the proceedings.

            “You know what I was thinking?” Pitch says, rather casually, as they rearrange their legs so that Sandy’s are spread outside of Pitch’s, “One afternoon, when we are both feeling rather lazy, we could recline on one of your sofas, set in front of a window, so we could watch the ocean.” Sandy has no idea what he’s getting at, but he’s pretty sure Pitch has discovered at least three more silly little spots on this thighs and knees. “We could have tea, we could talk of idle things, it would be lovely. You would be sitting in front of me, between my legs, leaning back on me. It would make your neck most convenient to kiss. This would slow the conversation, but how could I mind that? The quiet moments would be perfect for me to slide my hands under your shirt and into your trousers so I could caress and stroke you—” Pitch pauses for a moment, and the teasing pressure of his fingers reminds Sandy to work a little necessary spell.

            Pitch squeezes Sandy’s thigh—in comfort, thanks, or just because he likes the feel of Sandy’s flesh—and slowly presses one finger into him while he continues talking. “I think that would be a delightful afternoon, don’t you, Sandy? Perhaps you would fall asleep after my ministrations, and I would have the luxury of holding you for hours…”

            “I—ohh—I, fall asleep?” Sandy struggles to remember what sort of objection he had wanted to offer as Pitch now scissors two absurdly long fingers inside him. “Surely—surely I must do something for you?”

            “No,” Pitch says with a mild smile, gripping Sandy’s hip and adding a third finger. His smile grows wider as Sandy’s hips jerk, trying to draw Pitch’s fingers deeper. “I’m telling you about my fantasy, Sandy.” He steadily thrusts with his hand and pauses again, the better to listen to Sandy’s beautiful little moans. “I have not often enough been the instrument of your pleasure.”

            “That doesn’t sound like devouring,” Sandy says breathlessly.

            “Does it not?” Pitch asks. He removes his hand and replaces it with his cock, pushing into Sandy slowly, carefully, despite the way Sandy’s chest heaves and despite how he can’t keep his hips still, his body telling more truth about how much he wants Pitch than even Shining could.

            Deep inside Sandy, Pitch holds himself still for just a little while longer. He leans down atop Sandy and kisses him deeply, greedily. “Does it not?” he murmurs. He feels the slickness of Sandy’s pre-come on his stomach and decides that he’s held off long enough. He bites Sandy’s lip just as he begins to thrust, and Sandy, of all things, _whimpers_. He changes his bite to a softer kiss and reaches between them to give Sandy's cock a few quick strokes. He smiles as Sandy thrusts into his hand, and Sandy, despite the bright blush that's spreading from his face and down across his chest, despite the wide-blown pupils of his eyes, isn't yet so undone that he can't tell that this smile isn't simply for the sake of pure physical pleasure, though if Pitch feels anything like he does now--!

            "What is it?" Sandy manages to say, as Pitch gives him a slow, deliberate stroke, his fingers lingering on the head, and Sandy almost forgets why he's asked the question at all.

            "I'm not sure if I should say," Pitch says. "The thought doesn't seem quite right."

            "It seems to be keeping you hard, though," Sandy says, his tone failing to be teasing as Pitch shifts his angle, making Sandy throw his head back and twist his hands in the sheets, murmuring something that sounds a lot like "feels so good" in somewhat slurred Shining.

            "Sure you won't tell me to stop?" Pitch asks, and Sandy gives him as scornful a look as he can manage.

            "Pretty sure," Sandy says.

            "I--mm--wanted to say that I feel like your cock fits my hand more perfectly than even that knife handle did."

            Sandy laughs and sweeps his hands up and down Pitch's sides. "If I had said that, you'd be the one stopping, asking me how I could say such a thing."

            "I--well--not _anymore_ ," Pitch says. He leans down and kisses the corner of Sandy's mouth. "Will you allow me to take a liberty with you?"

            "You bit me two minutes ago and your--ahh--cock is inside me right now so I don't know what--oh--ohhh!"

            Pitch lifts up Sandy's wounded forearm and delicately touches his tongue to the end of the cut, a sensation joined with clear sight even for Sandy's light adept eyes, as a flash of lightning illuminates the room.

            With lips and tongue Pitch makes his way around the wound, kissing the boundary between smooth skin and growing scar gently enough that Sandy cannot tell if the sensations from this, combined with all the others, are of pleasure or pain.

            And yet, the confusion is purely physical. To see Pitch treat that wound, the wound he made, like that, is something he never could have asked for, even after those interrupted moments in Fountain Square, but it is something he realizes he would have grown to long for. But his shadow adept is with him, his shadow adept is not a stranger, his Nightmare King longs for the other half of what he longs for, and he does not have to wait and pine. With his mouth but no words, Pitch tells him that he will not deny his role in the equinox. The light scrape of his teeth against the margins of the wound says that he is not trying to hide this nor heal it faster, the goals that seemed to be behind his ministrations when they were weaker. Yes, I killed my lover, Pitch seems to say now. Yes, I brought him back to life.

            Sandy moans, and the sound is too bell-like for a human voice in such an earthy occupation, but it feels like his voice and so he doesn't care at all.

            "Sandy," Pitch breathes. "Sandy."

            Sandy watches, transfixed, as his wound begins to glow like the rising edge of the full golden harvest moon, and Pitch still keeps his mouth on it, kissing it again and again. His mouth is full of light and he is not forced away. Sandy sees it all through a hazy glimmer--the cuts on his face must glowing too—but does not miss the intricate pattern of light spreading from the wound across all his skin.

            The pattern curves and twists with far greater complexity than it did when he and Kozzy made love after his initiation, and he would say he has never seen anything so clearly, save that "seen" may no longer be the right word. More wondrously, though, the pattern is exactly mirrored in darkness far deeper than tattoos on Pitch's skin. Or--not mirrored, but completed. Pitch's pattern necessarily completes his own, while the lines of both draw the eye and mind to the point where Pitch's mouth meets Sandy's wound.

            He's never seen Pitch like this before; he cannot think. How much more beautiful can Pitch, can shadow adepts become, and he still survive? Sandy hears Pitch's breath catch in his throat and maybe Pitch is thinking the same thing, or maybe he is wondering at how, spilling light, the wound refuses to look like anything else, the wound is still a wound and it will not be denied; it shines necessary and beautiful but it will not be gilded, will not be glazed.

            "Sandy," Pitch says, and there seems to be more behind the sound than ever before.

            "Pitch," Sandy says, and it echoes like every breach slamming closed.

            "We are..." Pitch doesn't finish the sentence, running his hands over Sandy's body half-frantic, wanting to follow the trails of light, wanting to make sure there's still flesh for him to hold.

            Sandy reaches up and slowly passes his hands over the scars on Pitch's back. Within those lines of raised skin, he can feel the pattern of shadow pressing against the pattern of light in his hands, both changing to better lie next to each other, better complement each other. And the scars are just as much part of the pattern as his wound.

            "We are..." Pitch says again. He thrusts with each word, and Sandy moans again, not caring for the strangeness of the tone, Pitch will keep him in his body as much as he needs to be kept, his beautiful Pitch, his strong Pitch, his shadow Pitch.

            "We are us," Sandy says.

            Pitch moves his mouth from the wound to Sandy's lips for a long, deep kiss, the patterns on both of them shifting wildly, but never chaotically, to accommodate the change.

            Sandy gasps Pitch’s breath from him as he comes, and Pitch only gives him more as he follows with a shuddering cry.

            After a few minutes of quiet, as they lie next to each other, Pitch tries to make the rather loopy, loving smile on his face into an expression of stern concern. “You were starting to moan the origin tones, weren’t you? Or something—something else.”

            Sandy yawns, smiles, and leans forward to kiss Pitch’s nose. “Something, yes. I’m not sure if it was the origin tones. I wasn’t paying that much attention.”

            “Well, aren’t you—I mean—that was—”

            Sandy kisses him gently into silence as thunder rumbles outside. “It was wonderful, Pitch. That’s what it was. Even if we aren’t…exactly as human as we always insisted.”

            “And that doesn’t worry you?” Pitch asks.

            “No. For one,” Sandy laughs a little sheepishly, “I think we made enough of a mess to prove that we’re still human enough for, well, each other. And for another…” He reaches up to cup Pitch’s face. “I’m not worried because now I _know_ that even if I’m different from the rest of humanity, you’re different in the same way. And I have you beside me. In our bed.”

            Pitch turns his head and kisses Sandy’s palm. “You’re being awfully sweet and philosophic towards someone, as you say, not entirely human, who said he wanted to devour you.”

            Sandy’s smile is slow and pleased and sends heat spiraling through Pitch even now, so soon. “Shining never killed my love for metaphors,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll mind being metaphorically devoured this way.”

            Pitch licks his lips. “Or other ways? That is, Sandy, I—”

            Sandy interrupts him with a laugh and stretches, and Pitch just stares. He needs to kiss every inch of Sandy’s golden skin and take his sweet time about it, kiss where the patterns were and weren’t, because when has he had time to do that?

            “You want to keep looking at me while we take a nice hot bath?” Sandy asks.

            “ _I’m going to do a lot more than look_ ,” Pitch says, his shadow accent worse than ever.

 

            Later, the rain stops for long enough that they’re able to take a walk on the beach.

            “Thoughts?” Sandy asks Pitch, as they slowly wander, hand in hand, under the still-threatening sky, looking out at the low, glassy spikes of the waves.

            “Were there a lot of days like this on the island? I know you said there weren’t a lot of storms, but it must have rained…it looks bleak. I don’t like to imagine you in a bleak, lonely place.”

            “Well, you know the loneliness was partially your fault, so you can feel guilty for that if you want. I’d rather you didn’t, because I don’t know how either of us will keep moving if we let the past weigh us down now. But, yes, there were many autumn days like this.” He stops walking and turns to face the sea directly. “I don’t think it’s bleak, though. Even before—all the time I’ve been a light adept, I’ve learned more about seeing the patterns and truths in things every day. There’s plenty to see here, in the clouds, and sky, and sand. And, there’s something I never told you about this island.”

            “Yes?”

            Sandy laughs. “You think I mean that there’s a likely moonpool spring here, or something. That’s not it at all. It’s just that this island, when I chose it…it reminded me of you. You see,” Sandy goes on, running his thumb along Pitch’s, “I never forgot how you acted about the city when you were banished. You couldn’t touch me so you touched the stones.

            “And then, when the other adepts were dying, I felt so alone, and I needed….well, I guess I needed you. But I didn’t know where you were. So even though I could have stayed at the academy—I could have, I think, even with all the memories. It would have been easier. Anyway, I found this island on an old chart. It didn’t have a name then, though it was near enough to the mainland to be part of the kingdom, and whoever had made the map had noted it had several springs. It was a good part of the kingdom, and I couldn’t see that there had been any reason for it to be ignored the way it had been, even if it was apart from everything else. And so it made me think of you.”

            “And all shadow adepts,” Pitch adds, and Sandy shakes his head.

            “Not for a long time. I’m not _that_ good or wise, Pitch.”

            “Hmm.” They walk a few more paces down the shore.

            “The restoration isn’t going to go smoothly,” Sandy says. “The new adepts—everything will have to be different for them. They’ll have to know that they might not be light or shadow adepts only, but possibly both.”

            “And shall they know what opportunity devoting themselves fully to one or the other gives them?”

            Sandy smiles wryly. “When we left this island just a few weeks ago, I’d have said yes with no hesitation. Now, I’ll say that we’ll tell them when they seem to start devoting themselves to one practice only. I suppose there will still be pairs. We’ll have to translate the Codex of the Adepts to see if it explains why. And if not…”

            "Does it bother you, that there are still some uncertainties about this land's magic?" Pitch asks.

            Sandy smiles. "A little bit. I still want to know everything about the origin of our magic, and the moonpools, and why, exactly, we can change light and shadow into liquid, and how adepts are chosen, and--well. Everything. But I’ll do my best not to be agitated about any of it."

            Pitch slips an arm around his shoulders. "I'm glad," he says, "that you're willing to let those things rest for a little while, at least." He looks out to sea, and when he next speaks, his voice is very quiet. Still his own, yes, but it blends almost seamlessly into the rush of the sea. "It'll never stop, Sandy. You'll never reach the end of things. Every revelation brings a new mystery. When I discovered I could become a shadow adept, it was a mystery why this was possible. We've found the answer to that, but now, it's a mystery why there should have been such a split possible in the first place. Zalla didn't have all the answers. What does it mean that the magic of this land seems so much more divergent than any other? Does it mean anything? There are always more questions."

            "I know," Sandy says, leaning into Pitch. "I know. One part of the pattern gets illuminated--back away, and it becomes another bright fragment surrounded by darkness." He wraps his arm around Pitch's waist. "Mysteries can be solved, but mystery can't. And that's all right. It's not a flaw in the world that I'm supposed to solve. It's your part of the world, and the world will always need you, even when it's perfect. It makes the world like a story, that way. A good story always tells us something we need, but doesn't tell us everything. The rest of the light has to come from within us.”

            "From the darkness inside our skulls," Pitch points out.

            Sandy shakes his head. "What a contradiction! It's enough to drive a light adept to distraction!"

            Pitch runs a finger along the sliver of bare skin between Sandy's hairline and his collar. "Perhaps you'd let a shadow adept distract you instead."

            "Something very essentially shadow adept, I'm sure," Sandy says with a low chuckle. "Making love with light adepts until they forget the vexing nature of the universe." He turns to face Pitch and wraps him in a tight embrace. "Someday isn't here yet, you know," he says, his voice barely audible above the sound of the ocean. "I don't have to speak it to know." He relaxes into Pitch's arms, their embrace mirroring his own in fierceness. With a sigh, he presses his face against Pitch's shirt, his nose brushing against the bare, tattooed skin revealed by the deep, unlaced neckline. He breathes in the faint, eerie, shadow-sweetness of Pitch's skin, and feels Pitch shiver when he breathes out against him. "But I think things are pretty close for us, right here, right now."

 

            _Hussssh. Husssssh. Husssssssh._ The waves sound much as they always have, as they rush against the shore of the Isle of Dreams. They take no heed of the sound of a new voice on the island, nor of the new footprints they wash away. They reflect dreams of mingled gold and black just as, nights before, they reflected all the dreams only of gold.

            And yet, perhaps the waves only sound much as they always have, not _exactly_. The moonpool flood retains its virtue in the waves and gives them new whispers as they flow to every shore, bringing that which perhaps even Shining could not name. But marvels, to be sure. Marvels and mysteries and wonders forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the first true "Our Bed" poem (a traditional format to celebrate waking with one's newly bonded lover) composed in over three hundred and fifty years. It's difficult to render certain aspects of Shining in English, but there are infixes that signal that words are being used in a metaphorical sense. This gives Shining the essential capacity for fiction and poetry. These infixes are actually one of the oldest aspects of the language, using a sound that standard Shining orthography doesn't include. They come from the time when Shining and Erebusian were one language. When Sandy and Pitch were at the Luminous Academy, this aspect of Shining was actually only taught in extracurricular tutorials.
> 
> I love you all! Only an epilogue remains.


	32. Epilogue: The Spring Equinox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitch and Sandy return to the Luminous Academy in the Springtime to begin one of their first tasks in the new world.

            The Luminous Academy was built to last, and even now, nearly four centuries after it was abandoned, its halls are all too recognizable to Sandy and Pitch as they make their way through building after building.

            "Incredible," Sandy murmurs, as they step into the grand gallery. Though ivy snakes over the outside walls, it hasn't managed to cover the majority of the brilliantly colored panes of glass that make standing in the room like inhabiting the heart of some vast, fiery opal. The pattern on the floor, too, remains mostly intact, few plants having dislodged any of the marble tiles that form an intricate mosaic of overlapping, interlocking circles and arcs.

            After only a moment of stillness, Sandy strides to the middle of the room and plants himself solidly on the central starburst. Red-gold light filtered through the stained glass directly overhead washes over him, and Pitch smiles at him as soon as he takes his gaze away from the dome. He's beautiful like this, of course, as he always is in light, but Pitch's seen him far brighter than any glass can make him. He doesn’t need the surface offered by this place anymore.

            Sandy puts his fists on his hips. "Well, I guess there's only one thing to do now," he says, and bends down to pry up one of the smaller, looser chunks of marble. He hefts it in his hand, and Pitch steps a little closer to him. "Here goes!" He flings the piece of marble at the dome. It strikes a pane of pale green glass, which shatters with probably the loudest sound that's been heard there in centuries.

            "What are you doing?" Pitch asks, alarmed, over the tinkling sound of glass shards falling to the floor. "That wasn't the obvious thing to do at all!"

            Sandy laughs and sighs. "So I guess I never did tell you what exactly I said when I came for you after...after they scourged you."

            "What did you say?"

            "I said I would tear down the Academy brick by brick if they didn't show me where you were. Well, said isn't quite right. I shouted it. In Shining."

            Pitch stares at him. "But...they did show you where I was."

            Sandy shrugs sheepishly. "Conditional was always my worst tense. I assumed I must have had it right because I said what I did so easily but..." he gestures to the broken glass, "I feel great now!"

            Pitch keeps staring at him. He remembers all too well the feelings of illness and unease that accompanied the passage of time as long as a thing that was said in Shining to be true in the future was not yet made true. "Are you telling me. Are you telling me, Master Sandren, Dreamweaver to the Kingdom, Dead and Raised, Tamer of Nightmares--"

            "I hate that title, I haven't tamed you a bit."

            "Are you telling me that during everything--everything--that came before this, you were lie-sick?"

            "You know it's different if it's a future thing! And once I became immortal there wasn't really a time limit anymore."

            "No. No." Pitch holds up a hand. "You lived for five centuries lie-sick. On a level proportional to personally tearing down a small town's worth of buildings, to say nothing of the metaphorical layers. And yet you did--you did so many things light adepts weren't supposed to be able to do, that no one had done yet, you didn't even _notice_ and now you're going to be able to lift yet another burden from your power!"

            "Pitch, I--" Sandy frowns. "I can't deny any of that."

            "You're terrifying, Sandy," Pitch says, and Sandy looks up, ready to argue with him, until he sees the fond smile on Pitch's face.

            "I bet I could bring it all down today," he says, but Pitch shakes his head.

            "Do you really want it to be just gone, Sandy? Forgotten?"

            Sandy takes a slow breath and looks around the room. "But it does need to come down, Pitch. And not just for my sake. For the sake of all the future shadow adepts." Pitch waits in silence. "But, no, it should not be forgotten. I will...I will speak to those chemists that I met with a few weeks ago. With my help we may be able to capture the likeness of this place on those thin silver plates. And after that, I will take the Academy apart carefully. The stones and glass may yet be used to build something new." He turns to Pitch, now standing beside him, and takes both his hands. "But then...I am enough as I am, Pitch. If you do not want this place destroyed..." He looks at the ground with a small smile. "I always thought you would want that more than I did. But I know there are memories for both of us here..."

            Pitch lifts his hand and brushes a lock of Sandy's hair away from his cheek. So this is it. The kind of offer he's only ever given before. A chance to say, stop, my love, stay as you are. He'd made those kinds of offers to Sandy before because he wanted to make Sandy happy, because he was afraid of what he might become, and because he trusted Sandy to make the right decision. And he always had, and the decision was never to hold him back.

            "We are the only two who might really need this place," he says, tracing his thumb along one of the scars on Sandy's cheek. "And you need it gone, and I..." He looks up at the dome. "I need you to be who you are, unbound and unfettered, more than I need this building."

            “Thank you,” says Sandy, pressing his face against Pitch’s hand. “Pitch. We will still be equals, you know. But if you need to return to the place where you were chosen by Shadow to learn more—well, there will be time to do it while I do what I have to here.”

            “There are things I would like to look into,” Pitch says. “But I will stay with you while you dismantle the Academy, and you will come with me to Shadow’s caves.” He takes Sandy’s hands in his own. “Shadow is yours now, too,” he murmurs.

            “I know,” Sandy says with a slow, broad, smile. “I know, I know. Just as Light is yours again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, thank you so much for coming on this journey with me.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I promise all the things I alluded to will be explained in later chapters.
> 
> The toast is from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, The Season of Mists. Sometimes I feel like my writing is just a very strange love letter to that man.


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